Sr. HW TEST ENGINEER

Summary / Objective

The Sr. Hardware (HW) Test Engineer owns electrical and high-speed hardware test for advanced optical products, namely on-board optical engines and modules such as high-density optical engine families, in vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL)-based multimode and silicon photonics (SiPh) variants—including optical PCI Express—and pluggable optical transceivers built with original design manufacturer (ODM) partners. The role develops electrical, high-speed signal, and control-interface test methods and automated test stations for engineering validation and production, correlates results across regional engineering labs, manufacturing sites, and original design manufacturer / contract manufacturer (ODM/CM) production test, and isolates hardware failures efficiently. It requires strong knowledge of component behavior, circuit operation, signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI), digital signal processor (DSP)/microcontroller unit (MCU) control interfaces, and high-speed serial link test methodology.

Essential Functions / Responsibilities

1. Test Planning & Validation: Develop electrical and high-speed hardware test plans, test limits, test flows, and validation methods for optical engines and transceivers, from engineering validation test (EVT) and design validation test (DVT) through production release.

2. Component Characterization: Characterize and validate electronic components and interfaces, including DSPs and retimers, MCUs, power management integrated circuits (ICs), clocks, electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), sensors, laser-driver and transimpedance amplifier (TIA) electrical interfaces, and protection circuits. Read and analyze schematics, power trees, transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) electrical paths, control interfaces, clock/reset circuits, and high-speed signal paths, and feed findings back to the design team.

3. Electrical Testing: Perform electrical testing covering voltage, current, module power, power sequencing, ripple/noise, inrush current, clock, reset, control signals, and interface timing.

4. High-Speed Signal Characterization: Perform high-speed electrical Tx/Rx characterization at 28G non-return-to-zero (NRZ) and 56G/112G/224G four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) per lane, analyzing bit error ratio (BER), eye diagrams, jitter, forward error correction (FEC) statistics, clock and data recovery (CDR) behavior, transmitter finite impulse response (FIR) and receiver continuous-time linear equalizer and decision feedback equalizer (CTLE/DFE) equalization, and loopback testing.

5. Signal & Power Integrity: Perform or support SI/PI characterization of modules, host boards, and fixtures, measuring insertion loss, return loss, impedance, time-domain reflectometry (TDR), crosstalk, and S-parameters.

6. Management & Control Validation: Validate module management and control functions including inter-integrated circuit and management data input/output (I2C/MDIO) communication, EEPROM and memory maps, alarms and warnings, reset and low-power states, module state-machine behavior, and firmware–hardware interactions, per Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS) for pluggable transceivers and proprietary interface definitions for on-board optics.

7. Test Platform Integration: Build, integrate, maintain, and troubleshoot high-speed test platforms, including bit error ratio testers (BERTs), real-time and sampling oscilloscopes, vector network analyzers (VNAs), TDR instruments, host and evaluation boards, fixtures, cables, and Ethernet-switch or PCI Express host platforms.

8. Automated Test Software: Develop and maintain automated test software, instrument control, data logging, limit management, traceability, and reporting in Python, LabVIEW, C#, or equivalent programming environments.

9. Correlation & Quality Control: Perform test correlation, measurement system analysis and gauge repeatability and reproducibility (MSA/GR&R), reference-plane verification, cable and fixture de-embedding and loss compensation, calibration control, and golden-sample management across corporate laboratories, manufacturing sites, and ODM/CM production test.

10. Debugging & Failure Analysis: Analyze test data and isolate failures among device hardware, components, circuits, firmware settings, SI/PI, fixtures, cables, instruments, software, environment, and manufacturing processes, driving closure with design, product, and quality engineering.

11. Yield & Process Optimization: Improve test time, retest rate, false-failure rate, test coverage, station stability, and production test capability, supporting test deployment and transfer to internal manufacturing sites and ODM/CM partners.

12. Mentorship & Documentation: Mentor engineers and technicians while establishing hardware test laboratory practices and documentation standards.

13. Supplier & Technical Review: Participate in reviewing and responding to suppliers' specification responses, waiver/deviation requests, test reports, root cause analysis (RCA) reports, process change notifications (PCNs), and related technical documents, with a focus on electrical, high-speed hardware, and test impacts.

Experience / Qualifications

1. Education: Bachelor's degree or above in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Communications Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

2. Experience: Ideally, 5+ years of hardware test, or hardware design and validation, experience on high-speed optical modules, transceivers, serializer/deserializer (SerDes) or physical-layer device (PHY) devices, or similar high-speed electronic products.

3. Technical Knowledge: A strong understanding of electronic components, analog/digital and power circuits, control interfaces, and high-speed serial links.

4. Signal Fundamentals: Working knowledge of NRZ/PAM4 signaling, BER, FEC, jitter, eye diagrams, CDR, equalization, SI, and PI.

5. Lab Competency: Ability to read schematics and troubleshoot hardware with oscilloscopes, BERTs, VNAs, TDR instruments, and equivalent laboratory equipment.

6. Component Familiarity: Working knowledge of DSP, MCU, power IC, clock, EEPROM, sensor, driver/TIA electrical interfaces, and module control functions.

7. Programming: Experience developing automated tests with Python, LabVIEW, C#, C/C++, or equivalent programming environments.

8. Soft Skills: Strong debugging, data analysis, failure isolation, and root cause analysis skills, paired with good written and verbal English communication skills.

Preferred Experience / Desired Skills

• Experience with 400G, 800G, or 1.6T optical transceivers, on-board or mid-board optical engines, or other 112G/224G PAM4 platforms (both VCSEL-based multimode and SiPh products are relevant).

• Experience with CMIS, I2C/MDIO, module evaluation boards, Ethernet-switch/BERT platforms, and PCI Express (Gen 5/Gen 6) host and link testing.

• Experience with S-parameter, TDR, insertion loss, return loss, crosstalk, and high-speed fixture and cable characterization and de-embedding.

• Experience with test correlation, MSA/GR&R, guard banding, measurement uncertainty, and production test deployment, including transfer to ODM/CM partners.

• Knowledge of optical module architecture and the electrical-to-optical interaction among DSP/retimer, driver, laser, photodiode (PD), and TIA, with the ability to run combined electrical/optical debug alongside optoelectronic (OE) test engineers.

• Self-motivated, well organized, and able to work independently and cross-functionally with distributed global teams and partner sites.

• Ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally as needed.

Training Required

1. On-the-job training as appropriate.

2. Product-, process-, test-, quality-, and safety-specific training as required by assigned responsibilities.