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Hardware Engineer

Salience Labs

Salience Labs

Other Engineering
United Kingdom
Posted on Oct 12, 2025
🔎 Job Overview

As a Hardware Engineer at Salience Labs, you will play a crucial role in creating and testing the electronics that power our innovative hybrid photonic-electronic systems. As an early member of our team, you will directly contribute to our mission of bringing cutting-edge photonic products to high-performance compute systems, particularly those used for AI. This role offers a dynamic mix of system design, PCB design, system bring-up, and qualification, with a portion of hands-on lab work at our Oxford office.

✏️ What you'll be doing

  • Detailed hardware design, including specification, simulation, schematic capture (using Altium), and component selection. PCB layout experience is a strong advantage.
  • Bringing up and testing new hardware in the lab, focusing on the electronic components and their interaction with photonic elements.
  • Diagnosing and resolving issues during hardware bring-up and testing.
  • Thoroughly characterizing new electronic systems and their integration with photonic components.
  • Characterizing the mechanical and thermal properties of the systems and their impact on photonic performance.
  • Qualifying electronic systems for production, collaborating with external test houses as needed.

👀 What we're looking for

  • 3+ years of experience in high-speed digital or analogue design, encompassing high-speed discrete analogue-to-digital conversion, high-performance FPGAs, and high-speed digital interfaces (including Ethernet and DDR).
  • 3+ years of experience in bringing up and testing new electronic systems.
  • Proficiency in diagnostic engineering, including strong rework skills.
  • Comfort working both independently and within small, multidisciplinary teams.
  • Strong technical, organisational, and time management skills to translate requirements into successful hardware implementations.
  • Drive, motivation, and flexibility to thrive in a fast-paced start-up environment.

✨ Even better if you

  • Have experience with PCB layout.
  • Have experience working with external vendors for layout, manufacturing, assembly, and qualification.
  • Have experience characterising mechanical and thermal properties of electronic systems.

Salience is a leader in photonic solutions targeting connectivity for AI data center and financial trading infrastructure.

Founded in 2021 and backed by over a decade of research from the University of Oxford in the UK and University of Münster in Germany, Salience’s innovative developments in photonic switching technology enable high-speed, ultra-low latency networking fabrics that remove infrastructure bottlenecks for AI workloads.