CTO / Chief Photonics Officer (Stealth Photonic Bio-sensing Venture)

You own the photonic and detection stack from architecture through foundry to a working integrated reader. You are the technical anchor who turns design intent into manufacturable, clinical-grade silicon, and ultimately the person who decides which physics gambits ship and which we leave for the next product.

What you'll do

• Photonic and detection architecture for the disposable chip and reader.
• Foundry execution: PIC, nano-optical, and microfluidic prototyping relationships; tapeout cadence; yield, robustness, and tolerance management.
• The design loop: working alongside our automated multi-physics design engine; interrogating its output, catching unphysical behaviour, and driving design-arounds.
• Reader integration: opto-mechanical, thermal, and electronics integration with the cartridge.
• Risk register: what fails, how often, how we engineer it out for a device that has to be manufacturable at scale.
• Hiring: your network is part of the value you bring for the first technical hires (micro-fluidics, hardware/firmware, instrumentation).

What you'll need

• PhD in silicon photonics or EE, demonstrable experience taking PIC designs to working silicon.
• Have personally taken multiple designs from layout to working silicon at a commercial photonics foundry.
• Comfortable across photonic integration, photon-counting detection, and nano-optical component design.
• Reads simulation and optimiser output as a co-pilot, not a black box.
• Intellectually honest about uncertainty and comfortable being the deepest expert in the room.
• Sceptical of black-box AI on physics problems and bias to ship, not polish.

Nice to have

• Prior experience in scientific instrumentation, bio-photonics, or biomedical optical engineering.

What they offer

• Founding team-level equity.
• Salary calibrated to the round size and the role's market reality at pre-seed close.