Full-Time
Reliability Engineer
Updated on 9/4/2026
Lumotive
51-200 employees
Develops solid-state lidar sensors using metamaterials
Compensation Overview
$90k - $105k/yr
Redmond, WA, USA
In Person
Bachelor's, Master's, PhD
 Hardware Engineering (1) |
|---|
Get referred to Lumotive
See people who can refer or advise you
- A bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, physics, materials science, or a related field is required.
- At least 5 years of experience in semiconductor or optoelectronic device reliability, failure analysis, or closely related roles is required.
- Hands-on experience designing and executing accelerated stress tests, including high-temperature operating life, temperature cycling, humidity or highly accelerated stress testing, and high-temperature storage.
- Hands-on failure analysis experience, including optical microscopy, electrical characterization, and systematic root-cause investigation.
- Statistical reliability analysis skills, including time-to-failure distributions such as Weibull, acceleration modeling such as Arrhenius, and lifetime projection.
- Experience characterizing failure modes outside standard textbook models using first-principles analysis.
- Proficiency in Python, JMP, or similar tools for analyzing large reliability datasets.
- Experience with liquid crystal devices, MEMS, image sensors, photonics, or other emerging semiconductor device technologies.
- Familiarity with JEDEC and AEC-Q100 reliability and quality standards and adapting them to devices they were not written for.
- Experience running split-lot design-of-experiments with wafer fabs or materials vendors to improve reliability.
- Experience defining burn-in and production screening for early-failure elimination.
- Experience with test-data infrastructure, databases, Tableau or similar dashboards, Git, and software development best practices.
- Own core light-control metasurface reliability at the chip level by defining the stress-test strategy, executing it, and serving as the authority on failure modes, mechanisms, and lifetime.
- Design and run accelerated life tests, including high-temperature operating life, high-temperature storage, temperature cycling, humidity or biased-humidity testing, and optical exposure, and define new stress conditions to surface latent failure modes.
- Perform hands-on failure analysis through optical and electrical inspection, defect tracking, precursor identification, and root-cause hypothesis generation and testing.
- Build statistical lifetime models using time-to-failure distributions, acceleration factors, and activation energies to project reliability from accelerated conditions to customer-use conditions.
- Correlate reliability outcomes with wafer-fab process splits, materials experiments, and assembly variables, and drive design-of-experiments with process and fab partners to improve intrinsic reliability.
- Define pass/fail criteria, burn-in, and screening strategies to prevent early failures in customer deliveries.
- Develop and maintain analysis tooling, including Python, test databases, and dashboards, to turn raw stress-test data into conclusions.
- Document each study in the knowledge base with conclusions and next steps, present at reliability reviews, and flag new failure modes to the broader team.
- A master's or PhD degree is preferred.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with disciplined documentation of clear conclusions and next steps.
- Intellectual curiosity and ownership in continually identifying and investigating potential failure mechanisms.
Lumotive develops solid-state lidar sensors using Light Control Metasurfaces to digitally steer laser beams for 3D sensing. Their technology targets automotive ADAS and autonomous vehicles as well as smart-space applications like real-time traffic monitoring. By steering light without moving parts, the sensors offer a wide field of view, good durability, and a compact form factor that helps reduce cost. The goal is to provide dependable, scalable solid-state lidar that enables high-quality 3D sensing for cars and urban environments through metamaterial-based beam steering.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$72M
Headquarters
Bellevue, Washington
Founded
2018
Get referred to Lumotive
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund backed Lumotive's Series B expansion to $59 million.
- Namuga, Hokuyo, and E-Photonics partnerships show multi-region commercial pull in robotics.
- Lumotive opened Oman and Taiwan offices to scale sales, manufacturing, and customer engineering.
What critics are saying
- Lumotive still lacks proven automotive volume; April 2026 wins remain reference-design milestones.
- The company plans optical switches by end-2026, risking distraction from LiDAR commercialization.
- If 2026 customer conversions stall, limited capital and niche demand threaten a long commercialization runway.
What makes Lumotive unique
- Lumotive's LM10 LCM enabled 180-degree solid-state LiDAR at 30 FPS in April 2026.
- Its 2D photonic beamforming chip, announced March 19, 2026, extends one platform beyond LiDAR.
- More than 160 patents and semiconductor-speed steering create a defensible, hardware-level moat.
Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?
Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
PTO plus 14 paid company holidays
401K with 3% contribution
Stock Options
Life insurance and disability
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -1%1 year growth
↓ -1%2 year growth
↓ -1%Lumotive, a programmable optical semiconductor pioneer, has announced its LM10 Light Control Metasurface platform enabled the first fully solid-state 180° direct time-of-flight LiDAR system operating at 30 frames per second. The platform, combined with Adaps Photonics's ADS6311 sensor, eliminates sensing blind spots and reduces sensor requirements for autonomous systems. The technology electronically steers light at semiconductor speed, delivering 180° horizontal coverage and up to 140° vertical coverage whilst extending range performance to 50 metres. The system doubles typical 15 fps performance seen in current implementations and maintains reliable perception in challenging weather conditions. The LCM-based reference design is now available to LiDAR developers and module manufacturers. Ecosystem partner Namuga has showcased its Stella-180 prototype using Lumotive's technology, with sample availability for OEMs targeted for later this year.
Lumotive demonstrates 2D photonic beamforming chip. The programmable 2D photonic beamforming chip enables software-defined optics for AI, communications, and sensing. Lumotive announced the demonstration of the first programmable two-dimensional (2D) photonic beamforming chip based on its Light Control Metasurface (LCM) architecture. Partner Content 03.20.2026 By: Telink Partner Content 03.19.2026 By: Monolithic Power Systems Partner Content 03.19.2026 By: Shanghai Yongming Electronic Co.,Ltd The device enables electronic control of light across two spatial dimensions within a single semiconductor, enabling dynamic beam steering and shaping without mechanical components. This approach allows for real-time optical control via on-chip-integrated nanoscale metasurface elements, improving reliability and scalability compared to traditional optical systems. The technology introduces software-defined control of light, enabling programmable optical behavior in applications such as optical circuit switching, photonic communications, optical computing, and advanced sensing systems. These capabilities are particularly relevant to AI data center infrastructure, where increasing bandwidth and energy efficiency demands are driving interest in optical interconnects. By supporting precise phase control across a two-dimensional surface, the chip can perform multiple optical functions, such as beam steering, splitting, and focusing, within a single device. This reduces the need for discrete optical components such as lenses and mirrors, enabling more compact, integrated system designs. The development addresses key challenges in scaling optical switching architectures for hyperscale data centers, where high port counts and efficient data routing are critical. Programmable photonic devices such as this could provide a path toward more flexible and energy-efficient optical networks.
Lumotive, a programmable optical semiconductor company, has demonstrated the world's first programmable two-dimensional photonic beamforming chip using its Light Control Metasurface technology. The breakthrough enables electronic control of light across two dimensions within a single semiconductor chip, addressing a long-standing challenge in optical science. The technology dynamically steers light beams using nanoscale optical elements with no moving parts, bringing software-defined control to photonics. Applications include optical circuit switching for AI data centres, photonic communications, optical computing and advanced 3D sensing for autonomous systems and robotics. The innovation addresses growing bandwidth and power consumption challenges in AI infrastructure networks. Lumotive's platform offers a scalable path towards high-port-count switching architectures needed for next-generation data centres, whilst potentially replacing multiple traditional optical components with a single reconfigurable semiconductor device.
Lumotive opens offices in Oman and Taiwan to boost commercialization of its optical 3D sensor chips. Months after raising $59 million in venture capital to commercialize its miniaturized 3D sensors, Redmond, Wash.-based Lumotive is going global. The company says it has opened offices in Oman and Taiwan to help bring its products to market - and has added two senior tech industry leaders to its management team. "These milestones mark a pivotal moment for Lumotive as we move from innovation to large-scale commercialization," Lumotive CEO Sam Heidari said today in a news release. Founded in 2017, Lumotive is one of several startups that were spun off from Bellevue, Wash.-based Intellectual Ventures to take advantage of an innovation known as metamaterials. The technology makes it possible for signals to be "steered" electronically without moving parts. Lumotive's Light Control Metasurface platform, also known as LCM, can steer laser light to capture a 3D rendering of its surroundings, using a device that's smaller than a credit card. Such laser-based location sensing is known generically as lidar (an acronym that stands for "light detection and ranging") The company's backers include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' investment fund as well as Samsung Ventures, the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Silicon Valley's MetaVC and Oman's ITHCA Group. When Lumotive was founded, the spotlight was on the technology's use in lidar systems for self-driving cars. Since then, lidar sensing has turned up in a wider array of devices, ranging from robots to smartphones. "To be honest, even though we have had good engagements in automotive, our primary focus has been robotics," Heidari told GeekWire. Lumotive has announced deals to provide its 3D sensor systems to three robotics companies: Hokuyo Automatic in Japan, Namuga in South Korea, and E-Photonics in Saudi Arabia. More deals are in the works. To address anticipated demand, Lumotive has added Oman and Taiwan to a list of corporate locales that includes its Redmond HQ and branch offices in San Jose, Calif.; and Vancouver, B.C. Lumotive's Center of Excellence in Muscat, Oman, provides dedicated customer engineering and program management resources for Middle East and European markets. The Taiwan office beefs up Lumotive's manufacturing operations, sales and field application capabilities near key partners in Asia. Heidari said Lumotive has expanded its workforce by 50% over the past year. The current tally has risen to nearly 80 employees worldwide, roughly half of whom are based in Redmond. That expansion is driven by two factors. "One is that as more customers come up, we need to build the infrastructure to be able to support them and help them through their designs," Heidari said. "The second thing is that we're actually looking at new areas of design, to augment our product and increase our market presence." Heidari highlighted two hires: Lumotive's executive vice president of global business, Tristan Joo, brings more than two decades of experience in optical semiconductors at companies including Ofilm, Polight and ams OSRAM. Hassan Moussa, vice president of customer engineering and general manager of Lumotive Oman, previously led Valeo's lidar program and has more than 20 years of experience in automotive sensing systems. Lumotive has also expanded its distribution network and its partner ecosystem. In today's news release, Joo said the new offices and partnerships will give Lumotive "the reach, capital and scalability to lead this next phase of global adoption - from robotics and automation to automotive and smart infrastructure." Moussa said Lumotive is redefining how 3D sensors are built, "shifting 3D sensing from niche lidar systems to a broader ecosystem where anyone can build it, just like cameras." When the bulk of this year's Series B round was announced in February, The Wall Street Journal noted that Lumotive was bucking a trend that favored investment in artificial intelligence over non-AI technologies. Months later, Heidari acknowledges that getting investors excited about 3D sensing hasn't always been easy. "Coming up with something that is not AI today - sometimes you just don't get the audience, even though what we are doing obviously is going to benefit the AI revolution," he said. "AI is like a brain, right? Your brain without your senses is very limited. You need the eyes and the ears to absorb the physical world in order to utilize your brain." Looking more broadly, Heidari sees opportunities for optical semiconductors in the data centers that are powering the AI revolution. "In data centers, there are switches that connect different racks of CPUs or GPUs, and these switches today are very power-hungry and very expensive," Heidari said. "There are initiatives in the industry to simplify them by keeping them all in the optical domain, versus a hybrid of optical and electronic types of switches. So we are planning to be active in that market as well." In the meantime, the semiconductor industry is taking notice. Electronic Product Design & Test, a British journal focusing on electronics design, put Lumotive on its list of the year's top startups last month. And just last week, the Global Semiconductor Alliance gave Lumotive its "Startup to Watch" award. "We had Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, and many other brand names in the semiconductor space in the room," Heidari said. "It was attended by 1,700 people, all executives and managers of semiconductor companies, and we were honored to receive the award for the best startup."
Lumotive has reopened its February Series B funding round, adding Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund and ITHCA Group as new investors. This expansion has increased the total size of the round to $59 million. The additional capital comes from two strategic investors: Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund, which focuses on warehouse and logistics technology investments, and ITHCA […]