System Dynamics Simulation Engineer - Photonics and Control
About Xanadu: Xanadu’s mission is to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere.
At Xanadu, we are learners, innovators, researchers, collaborators and problem solvers. We are creating something that has never been built before. What we are doing is extremely hard, the classic moon shot. Few people in their life will be able to be a part of something like this, where if we are successful, the technologies we develop will solve some of the world’s most challenging problems and literally change the world. And that is something to be excited about!
Your role and responsibilities:
As a System Dynamics Simulation Engineer within the Systems Architecture team, you will spearhead the synergy between physical hardware and the software control stack. You will develop and optimize high-performance numerical models to define performance boundaries, quantify the impact of physical imperfections on system-level requirements, and inform design choices for our FTQC subsystems. Your system-level simulations will help in architecting elaborate calibration procedures for our photonic chips and laser systems and feed directly into the development of our FTQC control software. By advancing our sophisticated in-house Python toolkits or leveraging specialized third-party solvers, you will make sure our simulation environment remains a robust, efficient, and predictive digital twin of our quantum hardware.
Basic qualifications and experience:
- BSc or MSc in Physics, Engineering, Optical Science, Math, or related field.
- Strong background in experimental and/or theoretical photonics.
- Strong background in numerical modeling.
- Practical experience with digital signal processing and feedback loops.
- Excellent Python programming skills: demonstrated experience building modular, maintainable, and well-documented codebases with particular proficiency in numerical packages (NumPy, SciPy, Numba, Jax, etc.) and automated testing frameworks.
- System-Level Analytical Skills: Proven ability to translate physical imperfections at the subsystem level into quantitative system requirements.
- Collaborative Hardware Development: Experience working closely with hardware or experimental teams to validate simulation results against empirical lab data and feed back on physical models.
Preferred qualifications and experience:
- PhD in Physics, Engineering, Optical Science, Math, or related field.
- Background in control theory.
- Background in photonic integrated circuits and/or optical telecommunication.
- Systems engineering experience.
- Experience controlling complex hardware systems in a lab or industrial environment.
- Experience with performance profiling and optimization (memory profiling, time complexity analysis, benchmarking).
- Experience with high-performance compiled languages (C++, C, Rust) or GPU-accelerated computing for optimizing simulation bottlenecks.
- Experience developing and maintaining software related infrastructure (CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions, containerization).