Full-Time

PCB Design Engineer

Arago

Arago

11-50 employees

Photonic AI chips for energy efficiency

No salary listed

Île-de-France, France

In Person

Category
Electrical Engineering (1)
Required Skills
Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design
Altium

Get referred to Arago

See people who can refer or advise you

Requirements
  • Experience designing multi-layer printed circuit boards with high-speed interfaces such as PCIe, DDR, and USB, including differential pair routing, impedance control, and stackup planning.
  • Strong background in board-level power management, including power tree design, DC-DC converter selection, and power-distribution-network analysis for complex systems.
  • Proficiency in schematic capture and PCB layout using tools such as Altium, KiCad, or Cadence, with familiarity with design-for-manufacturing and design-for-test principles.
  • Hands-on experience with fine-pitch, high pin-count components such as field-programmable gate arrays and ball-grid arrays, including fanout strategies and via-in-pad techniques.
  • Experience debugging prototypes using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and power analyzers, with a structured approach to fault isolation.
  • Familiarity with system-level integration challenges and collaboration with firmware, mechanical, and test engineers during prototyping and product development.
Responsibilities
  • Design and deliver high-performance printed circuit board systems that support rapid prototyping and product development cycles, while enabling experimental validation through custom control and measurement hardware.
  • Design and lay out advanced printed circuit boards with high-speed digital interfaces and robust power architectures, ensuring signal integrity, power stability, and manufacturability.
  • Specify and integrate power delivery components such as DC-DC converters, low-dropout regulators, and filters for complex mixed-signal systems.
  • Lead bring-up and debugging of hardware prototypes through structured testing and fault analysis.
  • Assist in designing and implementing control and measurement electronics for experimental setups, supporting laboratory validation and characterization.
  • Maintain and manage component libraries, ensuring accuracy, lifecycle compliance, and reusability across projects.
Desired Qualifications
  • Ability to perform signal-integrity and power-integrity simulations for high-speed interfaces.

Arago develops energy-efficient AI hardware using photonic technology. It builds a proprietary photonic processor called JEF that processes data with light instead of electricity, aiming to cut AI compute energy use by 10x–30x while delivering comparable performance to current GPUs. The processor combines photonics, electronics, and software in a hybrid architecture, and is paired with a software stack named CARLOTA that lets AI developers run models on standard frameworks like PyTorch without changing code. This makes it easier to deploy photonic acceleration in AI workloads. Arago differentiates itself by targeting substantial energy savings at scale through photonic computing and by providing an integrated toolchain that abstracts hardware complexity for researchers and developers. Its goal is to reduce the energy consumption of AI computations in data centers and other compute-intensive environments, enabling high-performance AI with lower power use.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Seed

Total Funding

$24.3M

Headquarters

Paris, France

Founded

2024

Get referred to Arago

See people who can refer or advise you

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Arago closed a 26-million-dollar seed in July 2025 from Earlybird, Protagonist, Visionaries Tomorrow.
  • Its team grew from 20 to 40 employees by June 2026, accelerating execution.
  • CNBC reported April 2026 investor appetite for European AI-chip startups, including Arago.

What critics are saying

  • Lightmatter raised 400 million dollars in October 2025, outgunning Arago on capital.
  • Ayar Labs, Marvell, and NVIDIA already own photonics supply chains Arago still lacks.
  • If JEF misses engineering-sample milestones in 2026, Arago becomes a science project.

What makes Arago unique

  • JEF uses photons for matrix math and electronics for control, cutting GPU energy.
  • CARLOTA plugs into PyTorch, letting teams adopt Arago without rewriting model code.
  • Paris, Palo Alto, and Tel Aviv give Arago transatlantic engineering access and recruiting reach.

Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?

Benefits

Health Insurance

Stock Options

Relocation Assistance

Paid Vacation

Commuter Benefits

Professional Development Budget

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

14%

1 year growth

14%

2 year growth

25%
Dataweek
Aug 27th, 2025
Arago raises $26M for photonic AI chip

Arago, a deeptech startup, has raised $26 million in seed funding to commercialize its photonic AI chip, 'JEF'. This chip uses lasers to process data with photons, offering 10x lower energy consumption than current GPUs. Arago's technology is compatible with existing AI ecosystems and aims to revolutionize AI compute infrastructure. The funding will accelerate product development, expand the team, and enhance business partnerships across France, North America, and Israel.

Complete AI Training
Jul 26th, 2025
Sumitomo Invests in AiRato's AI Therapy

Sumitomo Corporation has invested in AiRato Inc., a startup specializing in AI-driven cancer radiation therapy planning. Their AI software reduces planning time from six hours to 20 minutes. Sumitomo and AiRato have signed an exclusive distribution agreement for Asia, with plans to start in 2026. This aligns with Sumitomo's strategic focus on medical technology. The investment builds on Sumitomo's experience in healthcare, aiming to expand AiRato's software across Asia.

EU-Startups
Jul 8th, 2025
French DeepTech company Arago raises €22.1 million to slash AI energy consumption with photonic chip | EU-Startups

Arago, a Paris-based DeepTech startup pioneering a new class of energy-efficient AI chips powered by light, has raised €22.1 million in Seed funding to

Maddyness
Jul 8th, 2025
Arago AI raises $26M for energy-efficient AI

Arago, a French startup, has raised $26 million to address the high energy consumption of AI by developing a photonic processor named "JEF." Founded in April 2024, Arago aims to reduce energy use by utilizing lasers to process data with photons, which generate less heat than traditional electrons. This technology promises to be ten times more energy-efficient than current GPUs. The funding round was led by Earlybird, Protagoniste, and Visionaries Tomorrow, with participation from notable tech figures.