Staff / Sr. Staff HW Test Automation Engineer

Product Engineering builds the software that brings up, characterizes, and qualifies Lightmatter's photonic chips on real hardware — from bench-top bring-up through production test on automated test equipment (ATE). You'll write the code that drives instruments, testers, wafer probers, and lab automation to bring a chip to life and prove it works. Test software infrastructure at Lightmatter spans multiple platforms, wafer test, hardware validation, and laser/optical test, and this role often acts as the bridge between engineers working at the bench and the broader test software team.

As a Hardware Test Automation Engineer you'll have the opportunity to work across some combination of: an internal test software framework (Java/Python-based), industry-standard ATE test method and testflow development, wafer prober integration, instrument control (optical and electrical sources, meters, sensors), embedded/firmware interfaces on the hardware side, and data pipelines from lab equipment to structured results.

Responsibilities

• Learn the hardware you're automating well enough to make informed software decisions about it.
• Design and build test software that automates device bring-up, characterization, and production test sequences across bench and ATE environments.
• Develop and maintain test methods, test flows, and instrument control code depending on level and project while writing code and reviewing code are both daily parts of the role.
• Work directly with hardware and characterization engineers to understand their needs and translate device physics and test requirements into working, repeatable test software.
• Build and maintain data logging and results pipelines so test data is captured accurately and usable downstream (metric computation, yield analysis, production handoff).
• Debug test hardware/software integration issues, working across the device under test, the fixture, the instrument, and the test code to find root cause.
• Support test program releases to internal test cells and, at senior levels, to external test facilities.
• Communicate daily with the team on progress and blockers, and spend regular time in the lab working hands-on with hardware.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or related field.
• 8+ years of experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture, ideally in semiconductor or photonics.
• Track record of owning test software architecture for a product line, including decisions on how the framework scales across projects and teams.
• Deep hands-on experience with ATE test method/test flow development and/or embedded test frameworks for hardware test automation, plus fluency with instrumentation automation (SCPI/VISA or equivalent) at a level where you can teach it to others.
• History of mentoring engineers and driving cross-functional technical decisions with hardware, characterization, and manufacturing teams.
• Can articulate, end to end, how they scoped, planned, implemented, and validated an automation project.
• Comfortable working at the hardware/software boundary — reading and reasoning about embedded software (C/C++), controls, or firmware well enough to co-develop directly with the engineers who own it.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's/PhD with 3+ years, of experience in hardware test software, ATE systems, or test architecture, ideally in semiconductor or photonics.
• Experience integrating ATE with wafer-level hardware (probers, handlers) is a strong plus.
• Experience with photonic test instrumentation