About the role
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.
About Photonium
AI-Powered Optical Consulting & Software
Required skills
Job details
Salary
$150,000 - $200,000
Equity
0.5% - 2%
Location
New York, NY
Experience
0+ years
Funding
Total raised
$500K
Last stage
Seed
Investors
What happens next.
No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.
Confirm the fit
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I pitch you to the company
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
A meeting lands on your calendar
If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.