2026 Summer Internship Optical Transceiver Engineer PhD (Santa Clara, CA)

Who We Are

Applied Materials is a global leader in materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. We design build and service cutting-edge equipment that helps our customers manufacture display and semiconductor chips the brains of devices we use every day. As the foundation of the global electronics industry Applied enables the exciting technologies that literally connect our world like AI and IoT. If you want to push the boundaries of materials science and engineering to create next generation technology join us to deliver material innovation that changes the world.

What We Offer

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At Applied Materials CTO office we are developing optical interconnect solutions for the next generation hyperscale computing and AI/ML. You will be working with a highly capable international team to develop platform level solution for optical interconnect including CPO (Co-Packaged Optics).

Responsibility

• Define optical interconnect solution modules (200G/lane and beyond) aligned with product-level requirements.

• Conduct hardware design optical interconnect solution and customer related demo to validate platform solution including PCB design schematic capture and component selection. Guide layout engineers to complete PCB layout that meets mechanical signal integrity thermal and manufacturing constraints.
• Define and optimize signal integrity (SI) for 200G/lane and beyond covering high-speed SerDes channel modeling and link margin analysis.
• Develop robust power delivery network (PDN) solutions for high-density high-speed optical/electrical systems.
• Collaborate with optical packaging thermal and system engineers to co-design solutions that balance performance power and cost.
• Lead technical validation bring-up and performance optimization of CPO modules
• Support design validation qualification and root-cause analysis during development and production ramp.
• Stay current with and implement relevant industry standards (IEEE MSA CMIS etc.).
• Contribute to automation of transceiver performance testing using Python C or LabVIEW.

Qualifications

You should have System-level understanding of current and emerging optical transceiver architectures and standards And strong problem-solving skills and collaborative proactive attitude. Some travel might be required.

• Ph.D. or working towards in Electrical Engineering

Hands-on experience with:

• PCB schematic design and layout review for optical modules.
• High-speed opto-electrical system design including DSPs power rails and microcontroller interfaces.
• MSA and IEEE standards for optical transceivers and other interconnect standard (e.g. QSFP OSFP CMIS NVlink UCIe).
• Skilled in using lab equipment including DCA-X BERT real-time oscilloscopes OSAs and optical power meters
• Strong Python scripting skills for test automation and data analysis
• Solid understanding of SerDes tuning including eye diagram analysis jitter characterization and electrical compliance
• Experience working on both the optical module side and the host/system side of high-speed links

Additional Information

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Employee Type:

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Relocation Eligible:

The salary offered to a selected candidate will be based on multiple factors including location hire grade job-related knowledge skills experience and with consideration of internal equity of our current team addition to a comprehensive benefits package candidates may be eligible for other forms of compensation such as participation in a bonus and a stock award program as applicable.

For all sales roles the posted salary range is the Target Total Cash (TTC) range for the role which is the sum of base salary and target bonus amount at 100% goal achievement.

Applied Materials is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race color national origin citizenship ancestry religion creed sex sexual orientation gender identity age disability veteran or military status or any other basis prohibited by law.

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