Senior Manufacturing Engineer – Photonics Manufacturing & NPI
PsiQuantum's mission is to build the first useful quantum computers: machines capable of delivering the breakthroughs the field has long promised. Since our founding in 2016, our singular focus has been to build and deploy million-qubit, fault-tolerant quantum systems.
Quantum computers harness the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems that even the most advanced supercomputers or AI systems will never reach. Their impact will span energy, pharmaceuticals, finance, agriculture, transportation, materials, and other foundational industries.
Our architecture and approach is based on silicon photonics. By leveraging the advanced semiconductor manufacturing industry, including partners like GlobalFoundries, we use the same high-volume processes that already produce billions of chips for telecom and consumer electronics. Photonics offers natural advantages for scale: photons don't feel heat, are immune to electromagnetic interference, and integrate with existing cryogenic cooling and standard fiber-optic infrastructure.
That approach has since been tested at the highest level of scrutiny the U.S. government applies to emerging technology, and it has held up. In 2025, PsiQuantum closed a $1 billion funding round that valued the company at $7 billion. In 2026, the U.S. Department of Commerce signed a $100 million Letter of Intent under the CHIPS and Science Act, followed by a $125 million agreement with DARPA under Stage C of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, PsiQuantum's most valuable U.S. government agreement to date. This year, we also broke ground on our utility-scale quantum computer in Brisbane, Australia, and continued building out our Chicago site. Victor Peng, our CEO, and co-founder Jeremy O'Brien, now Executive Chairman, lead a team and board that reflects how seriously the world is taking this build, joined this year by Intel's Lip-Bu Tan and Atomico's Niklas Zennström.
PsiQuantum also develops the algorithms and software needed to make these systems commercially valuable. Our application, software, and industry teams work directly with leading Fortune 500 companies, including Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Mitsubishi Chemical, to prepare quantum solutions for real-world impact.
Quantum computing is not an extension of classical computing. It represents a fundamental shift, and a path to mastering challenges that cannot be solved any other way. The potential is enormous, and we now have the funding, the government validation, and the sites under construction to make it real.
Job Summary
This role serves as the manufacturing engineering owner responsible for transitioning advanced photonic hardware from Research & Development into pilot manufacturing, production, and eventual high-volume manufacturing.
Working closely with Process Engineering, Design Engineering, Test Validation Engineering, Supply Chain, and Operations, you will develop scalable manufacturing processes for hardware and subassemblies incorporating photonic integrated circuits (PICs), precision fiber optic assemblies, electro-optical systems, and cryogenic hardware supporting PsiQuantum's quantum computing platform.
This position requires extensive hands-on experience with precision optical assembly, fiber optic manufacturing, cleanroom operations, and New Product Introduction (NPI), while establishing manufacturing processes that meet quality, reliability, throughput, and cost objectives.
Responsibilities
- Lead manufacturing process development for PIC-based photonic hardware, fiber optic assemblies, electro-optical hardware, and precision opto-mechanical systems from R&D through pilot production and manufacturing scale-up.
- Serve as the Manufacturing Engineering lead during New Product Introduction (NPI), bridging research prototypes into robust, production-ready manufacturing processes.
- Develop scalable manufacturing methods supporting increased production volumes while maintaining quality, reliability, and optical performance.