Field Application Engineer: Optical Connectivity

Field Applications Engineer, Optical Connectivity - Datacom

Job Description

Located in the San Francisco Bay area

The Molex Sales Team in Fremont is seeking a dynamic and proactive Field Application Engineer (FAE) to lead technical engagements that enable the successful design‑in and deployment of Molex optical connectivity solutions at a key strategic datacom customer. You will not only drive technical engagements with customers in targeted areas of growth but also uncover new opportunities while developing strong relationships with customer engineering. Your work will directly support the adoption of high‑density optical connectivity solutions across advanced datacenter and AI infrastructure environments.

Our Team

Molex creates connections for life by enabling technologies that transform the future and improve lives. With presence in more than 40 countries, Molex offers a complete range of connectivity products, services and solutions for the data communications, medical, industrial, automotive and consumer electronics industries. Our Datacom and Specialty Solutions (DSS) team designs an extensive product line serving customers in telecommunications, datacom, hyperscalers, cloud, data center and storage applications.

What You Will Do

• Partner with customer engineering teams and Molex Sales to secure new design wins and build a convertible Salesforce pipeline that drives profitable year‑over‑year growth.
• Establish strong, strategic technical relationships with key engineering, system architecture, and deployment stakeholders at targeted datacom customer.
• Deliver innovative application solutions using Molex optical connectivity products, including connectors, patch cords, trunks, panels, and end‑to‑end infrastructure solutions.
• Support customer architecture and hardware teams in deploying optical connectivity solutions across rack‑, row‑, and pod‑level datacenter topologies, ensuring performance, density, scalability, and reliability requirements are met.
• Collaborate with customer development, manufacturing, process, and reliability teams to resolve technical challenges related to optical connectivity design‑in, installation, qualification, and deployment.
• Work with customer engineering teams to define, validate, and optimize optical infrastructure—covering trunks, patch cords, cassettes, connectors, and panels—from compute and switch platforms to the broader fiber plant, including polarity, labeling, manageability, and capacity planning.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor, providing insights and recommendations to enhance current deployments and inform future datacenter architecture decisions.
• Identify, diagnose, and resolve complex technical issues related to product integration, system compatibility, optical loss budgets, mechanical interfaces, serviceability, and deployment constraints.
• Partner with internal engineering, product management, advanced development, and sales teams to escalate and resolve critical customer issues efficiently.
• Monitor and communicate hyperscale datacenter and optical infrastructure technology trends internally to help inform roadmap development and differentiated solution strategies.
• Develop customer‑facing technical documentation, application notes, and supporting materials.
• Share knowledge and collaborate with fellow FAEs and cross‑functional teams across Molex’s datacenter and hyperscale ecosystem.
• Support Product Marketing by providing competitive insights, customer feedback, and market‑driven requirements to influence future solutions.

Who You Are (Basic Qualifications)

• Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• A minimum of 5 years of relevant engineering experience within the electronics, datacenter, or optical connectivity industry.
• Proven experience directly interfacing with customers in a technical role such as application engineering, systems engineering, or field engineering.
• Solid understanding of hyperscale datacenter architecture, networking, compute, storage, and optical infrastructure deployment models.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, prioritize dynamically, and work independently across internal and external stakeholders.

What Will Put You Ahead

• Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, or a related discipline.
• 7+ years of experience designing, qualifying, deploying, or supporting high‑density connectivity or optical infrastructure solutions.
• Hands‑on experience supporting or designing optical infrastructure for hyperscale data centers, including trunks, patching architectures, and panel systems.
• Knowledge of connector, cable assembly, and optical infrastructure design or manufacturing processes.
• Familiarity with datacenter topology planning, fiber routing strategies, polarity schemes, and installation best practices.
• Experience engaging directly with hyperscale customer hardware, network architecture, or datacenter deployment teams.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem‑solving skills.
• Experience using Salesforce and SAP systems.
• CAD modeling or system/mechanical integration experience.

For this role, we anticipate paying $170,000- $190,000 per year. This role is eligible for variable pay, issued as a monetary bonus or in another form.