Your mission
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
Type: Full-time, hybrid (1–2 days remote work per week)
Level: Senior Fellow / Principal / Distinguished
Your mission
The future of AI computing is light, not electrons.
Q.ANT is building photonic processing systems that compute with light – delivering a scalable, energy-efficient alternative to transistor-based architectures for next-generation AI and HPC applications.
As Principal System Integration Architect – Photonic AI Processors, you will provide technical leadership for the definition, integration, and bring-up of complete processor-based photonic systems. You'll oversee system-level electrical design – both digital and analog – ensuring performance and signal integrity at GHz frequencies, while coordinating activities across processor design, board/system hardware, firmware, and validation teams.
What makes this role unique
- High complexity: Integrating cutting-edge high-speed digital design (GHz-range interfaces, signal/power integrity) with novel photonic computing paradigms – an area with few industry precedents.
- Strategic freedom: Broad autonomy in defining system architecture, design rules, and validation strategies, constrained only by high-level product and business objectives.
- Decision authority: You are the primary decision-maker for system architecture trade-offs involving performance, reliability, manufacturability, and cost.
- Innovation mandate: Create best-practice methodologies for high-speed photonic system integration that will become institutional knowledge for future product generations.
- Real-world impact: Your work directly enables technology already deployed in production at world-leading institutions like the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre.
Your Impact & Responsibilities
Within your first 18–24 months, you will:
- Ensure first-pass success of complete processor-based photonic systems through expert oversight from architecture definition to lab validation.
- Reduce development cycle time by anticipating and resolving cross-domain integration issues early, before they become costly bottlenecks.
- Maintain system performance leadership through optimal integration of high-speed interfaces, analog subsystems, and processor core functions that deliver up to 30x energy efficiency vs. conventional systems.
- Deliver a complete system definition that meets aggressive functional, performance, and manufacturability targets to maintain competitive advantage in the rapidly scaling photonic computing market.
Key responsibilities
- Provide technical leadership for the definition, integration, and bring-up of processor-based systems, including all peripheral subsystems.
- Oversee system-level electrical design – both digital and analog – ensuring performance and signal integrity at GHz frequencies.
- Coordinate activities across processor design, board/system hardware, firmware, and validation teams.
- Act as the primary decision-maker for system architecture trade-offs involving performance, reliability, manufacturability, and cost.
- Guide lab bring-up activities, ensuring efficient debug, test coverage, and functional validation of new systems.
- Mentor senior engineers and provide architectural guidance to processor design teams to ensure alignment with overall system requirements.
- Define design reviews, simulation strategies, and lab bring-up plans to guarantee production readiness.
- Ensure interoperability and compliance with high-speed interface standards (PCIe, DDR, SerDes, etc.).
- Drive continuous improvement in system integration methodologies as we scale from pilot production to volume manufacturing.