CScale

Optical interconnects for large-scale AI infrastructure

Customer Engineering Leader

Engineering LeadershipConfirmed live in the last 24 hours

Full-timePalo Alto, CA, USAIn-person

About the Job

Requirements

Deep background in high-speed optical interconnect, such as pluggable or co-packaged optics, silicon photonics, or optical engines.
Systems thinking across optical, electrical, thermal, and power domains, with the ability to write clear, testable hardware requirements.
Experience building and leading a customer engineering organization in the semiconductor or systems industry.
Hands-on hardware bring-up, signal integrity and power integrity, validation, debugging, and root-cause failure analysis experience.
Ability to engage directly with customer system architects, defend technical positions, and write clearly.
Judgment and willingness to sign off on qualification or withhold sign-off.
Experience leading engineers across multiple disciplines.
15+ years of relevant experience.
BS, MS, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Optics, Physics, or a similar field.

Responsibilities

Recruit and grow a Customer Engineering organization that builds the technical path from defining application requirements to a proven solution.
Capture customer requirements, define solutions that meet those requirements, and prove the hardware works in customer labs and in front of the industry.
Partner closely with product management, engineering, and sales across applications engineering, solutions architecture, and demo engineering.
Serve as the primary technical interface to customers and partners before and after the sale; lead requirements capture, architecture and interoperability discussions, and technical objection handling.
Support evaluation platforms through bring-up and debugging in customer labs, and perform failure analysis on field and customer-observed issues.
Feed requirements back into product definition and own customer-facing technical documentation, including data sheets, application notes, and installation guides.
Define the complete optical interconnect solution across electrical, optical, mechanical, thermal, and management interfaces.
Write hardware requirements for module makers; review partner designs against requirements for host signal integrity, power delivery, and thermal performance; and drive issues to closure before build.
Own first hardware bring-up and solution validation, confirming the integrated system meets customer requirements in real operating conditions.
Own the qualification plan and serve as the signing authority on module qualification.
Turn demo requirements into platform, fixturing, and instrumentation; define what each demo measures and what it can legitimately claim.
Own demo bring-up, verify results before customers see them, and run or support demos at customer sites and conferences.

CScale is building the interconnect for gigawatt-scale AI. As AI scale-up moves toward deployments spanning thousands of accelerators and dozens of racks, the network needs to deliver high bandwidth, predictable low latency, and continuous communication. CScale is building integrated optical interconnect designed for this new scale, enabling accelerators to work together like a single, much larger computer. But at this scale, performance is only part of the challenge. Optical failures are inevitable, and the system needs to keep running. CScale is designing the interconnect for continuity.Lasers will fail. Compute shouldn’t.The ambition is simple:Build AI interconnect you can take for granted.CScale came out of stealth in September 2026 with $145 million in Series C funding, bringing total funding to $188 million.

About the role

You will recruit and grow a Customer Engineering organization that builds out the technical path from defining the application requirements to a proven solution. That means capturing what customers require, defining the solutions that meet those requirements, and proving the hardware works in customer labs and in front of the industry. The role partners closely with product management, engineering, and sales - and spans three functions: applications engineering, solutions architecture, and demo engineering.

What you’ll own

Applications engineering. You’ll be the primary technical interface to customers and partners, both before and after the sale. You’ll lead requirements capture, architecture and interoperability discussions, and technical objection handling. You’ll support evaluation platforms through bring-up and debug in customer labs, and run failure analysis on field and customer-observed issues. You’ll feed requirements back into product definition and own all customer-facing technical documentation, including data sheets, app notes, and installation guides.

Solutions architecture. You’ll define the complete optical interconnect solution across their electrical, optical, mechanical, thermal, and management interfaces. You’ll write the hardware requirements issued to module makers, review partner designs against them (host signal integrity, power delivery, and thermal), and drive issues to closure before build. You’ll own first hardware bring-up and solution validation, confirming the integrated system meets customer requirements in real operating conditions. You’ll also own the qualification plan and serve as the signing authority on module qualification.

Demo engineering. You’ll turn demo requirements into platform, fixturing, and instrumentation, and you’ll define what each demo measures and what it can legitimately claim. You’ll own demo bring-up, verify the results are real before any customer sees them, and run or support demos at customer sites and conferences.

Ideal candidate

Deep background in high-speed optical interconnect, such as pluggable or co-packaged optics, silicon photonics, or optical engines
Systems thinking across optical, electrical, thermal, and power domains, with the ability to write clear, testable hardware requirements
Built and led a customer engineering organization in the semiconductor/systems industry
Credibility at the bench: hardware bring-up, SI/PI, validation, debug, and root-cause failure analysis
Able to engage directly with customer system architects, defend technical positions, and write clearly
The judgment and backbone to sign off on qualification, or to withhold sign-off
Experience leading engineers across multiple disciplines
15+ years of relevant experience; BS/MS/PhD in EE, Optics, Physics, or similar

Compensation includes a base salary of $150,000–$250,000 and equity in CScale. Final offers depend on experience, market conditions and location.

About the Company

CScale

Optical interconnects for large-scale AI infrastructure

CScale builds optical interconnects for large-scale AI computing. Its integrated light engines power gigawatt-scale AI facilities by containing optical failures and keeping compute running across thousands of closely connected accelerators. The hardware provides high-bandwidth, ultra-low-latency optical links to connect accelerators across racks, making data movement between chips dependable for continuous AI workloads. Unlike many data-center components that rely on electronic signaling, CScale focuses on silicon photonics and photonic hardware to deliver scalable, reliable communication at scale. Founded in 2023 in Palo Alto, the company exited stealth in 2026 and has investors including NVIDIA and Intel Capital. Its goal is to enable uninterrupted AI training and inference across large AI infrastructure by delivering dependable optical interconnects that scale as data-center needs grow.

Company size: 51-200
Company stage: Series C
Total funding: $145M
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
Founded: 2023

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