Photonium is building the next-generation design automation platform for optical systems — like Cadence or Synopsys, but for optics.

Optical systems are foundational to technologies like quantum computing, biomedical imaging, LiDAR, and semiconductor manufacturing. But designing them is painfully slow and expensive. Engineers today rely on outdated tools and trial-and-error workflows that haven’t changed in decades.

We’re fixing that. Photonium uses AI to automate the entire optical design process — from layout generation and optimization to simulation, tolerancing, and sourcing. What once took months and teams of optical PhDs, we’re making possible in days — even for non-experts.

We’re a team of physicists and engineers who’ve felt these pain points firsthand, and we’re looking for mission-driven builders to join us. If you want to solve hard technical problems, work at the intersection of physics and AI, and help shape how the world designs next-gen hardware — reach out!

Company Description

Photonium builds next-generation design software for optical systems. Manually designing optical hardware is a costly bottleneck for fields like quantum computing, life sciences, LiDAR, and advanced manufacturing. We develop intuitive tools and intelligent automation to help engineers design optical systems faster and cheaper. Photonium is backed by Y Combinator (X25) and part of the NVIDIA inception program.

Role Description

This is a full-time on-site role for a Founding Machine Learning Engineer, located in NYC. The Founding ML Engineer will be responsible for the design and implementation of our optical design agent. You’ll develop ML models that generate candidate configurations, interface with simulation or analysis tools to evaluate performance, and implement learning loops to improve design outcomes over time.

What you'll do

•⁠ ⁠Develop models for generating and optimizing optical system layouts based on design goals and constraints

•⁠ ⁠Build workflows to interface with simulation tools and extract performance metrics

•⁠ ⁠Collaborate with optical engineers to define data structures and prepare training data

What we're looking for

•⁠ ⁠Strong experience in building and deploying ML pipelines.

•⁠ ⁠Interest in optics, physics-based simulation, or generative design.

•⁠ ⁠Familiarity with CAD, optics, and/or simulation tools is a plus.

Photonium sits at the intersection of AI, physics simulation, and intuitive design tools. We’re building a vertically integrated platform that handles the full lifecycle of optical system design — from product spec to manufacturable solution.