{"id":2001327,"url":"https://alion.io/job/xscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead","title":"Principal Module and FA Lead","company":{"id":3862680,"name":"Xscape Photonics","domain":"xscapephotonics.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/xscapephotonics","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Semiconductors","role_family":"Semiconductors","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Santa Clara, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":120000,"max_usd":241000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":1829},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Design of Experiments","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-31T20:43:27Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-25T20:02:58Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":86,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":86},"description":"About the role\nAs Xscape Photonics scales to volume production, this role owns module integration and system-level failure analysis across mechanical, electrical, thermal, firmware, and optical/photonics domains during the pre-production and early-volume phases - before ownership transitions to the NPI team as manufacturing shifts to contract-manufacturing-driven high volume.\nWhat you'll do\nServe as the focal point for module integration and system-level failure triage: quickly diagnose issues that span multiple domains, determine ownership, and convene the right cross-functional team to drive resolution\nOwn system-level integration of the module - ensuring mechanical, electrical, thermal, firmware, and optical/photonics subsystems come together to meet spec, and resolving integration-stage issues (fit, interface, tolerance stack-up, cross-domain interactions) before they surface as field or production failures\nWork with the NPI team to establish module integration procedures and KPIs - entry/exit criteria between build stages, integration test flow, and the metrics used to track integration health - so they carry forward cleanly as products move into CM-driven volume\nPartner with design engineers across mechanical, electrical, thermal, firmware, and optical/photonics to evaluate system-level trade-offs and diagnostics that guide failure analysis and debugging\nLead structured root-cause investigations using fishbone analysis and staged, resource-aware design of experiments - screening designs to triage candidate variables before committing to full characterization runs\nLead data analysis to verify root-cause hypotheses, and drive countermeasures to closure - tracking implementation through to actual design or process changes by the accountable owning team, rather than treating a documented finding as the end state. Feed learnings forward into NPI's process-refinement work to reduce repeat failure modes during the contract-manufacturing transition\nOwn the FA documentation and trend-tracking system - build this from scratch, as no formal infrastructure exists yet\nDefine and maintain clear handoff criteria to the NPI team as products transition from pre-production/small-volume to CM-driven high-volume manufacturing\nWhat success looks like\nIntegration issues (fit, interface, tolerance stack-up, cross-domain interactions) are caught and resolved pre-production, reducing the volume of cross-domain failures that reach FA\nModule integration procedures and KPIs are established jointly with NPI and hold up across the pre-production-to-volume transition, without needing to be re-defined at handoff\nFaster time-to-root-cause as the FA process matures, with a documentation/trend-tracking system that catches repeat failure modes early\nRoot causes reliably close the loop into real design or process changes - not findings that sit unimplemented\nClean handoffs to NPI at the CM transition, with repeat failure modes declining over time as FA learnings inform NPI's process work\nWhat you'll need\nBS+15 / MS+12 / PhD+9 years in hardware failure analysis, systems engineering, or related root-cause engineering roles. Degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics/Applied Physics, Materials Science, Optical Engineering, or related field. PhD candidates should demonstrate post-degree industry experience spanning multiple engineering domains, not solely depth in a single research area.\nWorking technical fluency across mechanical, electrical, thermal, and firmware domains; photonics/optical experience strongly preferred\nDemonstrated experience leading cross-domain root-cause investigations on coupled, multi-variable failure modes - not siloed single-domain diagnosis\nHands-on, methodical technical practice: personally runs test and measurement setups, and defaults to a repeatable, structured problem-solving method under pressure rather than ad hoc troubleshooting\nPractical experience designing and prioritizing DOEs under real-world constraints - limited samples, long test cycles, many candidate variables\nComfortable building quick first-principles models (thermal, electrical, mechanical) to test a hypothesis or narrow candidate variables before committing to physical test time - not dependent on physical data alone to build confidence\nTrack record of closing the loop from root cause to actual design/process change and engineering change control, including standing up processes or infrastructure from scratch in an early-stage or resource-constrained environment\nNice to have \nDirect photonics/optical packaging experience (fiber coupling, wire-bond/die-attach processes, epoxy and encapsulation materials)\nPragmatic judgment on depth vs. speed - knows when \"good enough root cause + corrective action\" beats chasing full certainty under schedule pressure\nCollaborative, root-cause-first mindset over a \"quality enforcement\" mindset","description_format":"text","description_chars":4902,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Optical Communications","Optics & Photonic Components"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-07T11:33:39Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":13,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.455,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":85,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-25T05:49:26Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/xscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/xscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-25T21:01:33Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":29702,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-26T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3862680},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3862680"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fxscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fxscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fxscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/xscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fxscape-photonics-principal-module-and-fa-lead"}]}