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Ayar Labs

Sr. Engineer, Research Software

San Jose, CA · On-site

$170K - $192K/yr

Sr. Engineer, Research Software Location: San Jose, CA (on-site) Ayar Labs is shattering AI data bottlenecks by moving data at the speed of light. As pioneers of co-packaged optics (CPO), we are ...

Ayar Labs

Sr. Engineer, Research Software

San Jose, CA · On-site

$170K - $192K/yr

Sr. Engineer, Research Software Location: San Jose, CA (on-site) Ayar Labs is shattering AI data bottlenecks by moving data at the speed of light. As pioneers of co-packaged optics (CPO), we are ...

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How much do research software engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 14, 2026, the average yearly pay for research software engineer in the United States is $200,510.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $205,000.00 and $205,000.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive in the Research Software Engineer position, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Research Software Engineer, you need strong programming skills (often in Python, C++, or Java), a solid understanding of algorithms, and an academic or industry background in computer science or a related field. Familiarity with version control systems like Git, cloud platforms, and experience using scientific computing libraries and frameworks are valuable, while a master's or Ph.D. can be advantageous for specialized roles. Excellent problem-solving, communication, and collaborative skills help in working closely with researchers and multidisciplinary teams. These capabilities are crucial for successfully translating complex research problems into robust, reproducible software solutions that advance scientific inquiry.

What are some typical daily responsibilities for a Research Software Engineer?

As a Research Software Engineer, your daily work often involves designing and implementing software to support cutting-edge research projects, collaborating with scientists to understand their computational needs, and ensuring code reliability and reproducibility. You may spend time optimizing algorithms, writing unit tests, documenting software, and participating in code reviews within a collaborative team environment. Additionally, you might help deploy research applications on high-performance or cloud computing platforms and contribute to research publications. Balancing independent programming tasks with ongoing communication is key to making meaningful contributions to both the research and software development processes.

What is a Research Software Engineer job?

A Research Software Engineer (RSE) combines expertise in software development and research to create, maintain, and optimize software used in scientific or academic projects. They work closely with researchers to develop efficient, reliable, and reproducible software solutions for data analysis, simulations, or machine learning. RSEs bridge the gap between research and software engineering, ensuring that computational tools meet the needs of scientific investigations. Their role may involve coding, performance optimization, software sustainability, and deploying applications on high-performance computing or cloud platforms.

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Research Software Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Research Software Engineer job openings in the United States as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 95% Full Time, 2% Part Time, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 87% Physical, 4% Hybrid, and 9% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $200,510 per year, or $96.4 per hour.
Sr. Engineer, Research Software

Sr. Engineer, Research Software

Ayar Labs

San Jose, CA • On-site

$170K - $192K/yr

Full-time

Re-posted 18 days ago

Job description

Sr. Engineer, Research Software
Location: San Jose, CA (on-site)
Ayar Labs is shattering AI data bottlenecks by moving data at the speed of light. As pioneers of co-packaged optics (CPO), we are using light instead of electricity to move data faster, further, and with a fraction of the energy needed to fuel the explosive growth of AI models.
Backed by industry giants like NVIDIA, AMD, Mediatek and Intel and manufactured in partnership with the world's leading semiconductor ecosystem, Ayar Labs' co-packaged optics solution is key to unleashing next-generation AI scale-up architectures.
Joining our Link Design and Architecture team, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the modeling and simulation backbone behind our silicon photonics optical I/O platform. Our team models our optical links end-to-end. This comprehensive approach spans the physics of individual photonic devices, the circuits and signal processing that drive them, and the statistical analyses used to set product specifications and predict manufacturing yield. To support this, we process large volumes of multi-source measurement and simulation data using a combination of industry-standard and in-house tools.
As a Research Software Engineer, you will work side-by-side with domain experts in photonics, circuit design, and signal processing to turn scientific code into robust, tested, and scalable infrastructure. You'll own the schemas, pipelines, and shared software that let our modeling stack grow with the product - making simulations faster to run, results easier to trust, and insights transparent to engineering teams and executive stakeholders alike.
Essential Functions
  • Partner with photonics and circuits engineers on their modeling code - review, refactor, and help evolve prototypes into well-tested, versioned, and properly packaged tools that teams across the company can depend on.
  • Design and maintain the data schemas and interfaces that describe devices, measurements, model parameters, and simulation results across the modeling stack.
  • Build and operate data ingestion, cleaning, and curation pipelines that turn raw measurement and simulation outputs into trusted inputs for link analysis and yield prediction.
  • Scale simulation and analysis workloads across HPC and AWS cloud environments, so link studies and statistical sweeps run reliably and reproducibly at product-relevant scale.
  • Integrate AI and ML tooling into engineering workflows - both to accelerate the software development lifecycle and to augment the team's modeling and data analysis capabilities.
  • Bring modern software engineering practice to the group: testing, documentation, CI/CD, reproducible environments, and code review, applied pragmatically in a research setting.
  • Collaborate closely with the Photonic Device Design and Analog/Mixed Signal teams to ensure modeling infrastructure evolves with the product roadmap.

Required Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Physics, Optics/Photonics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
  • 2+ years of experience building scientific or engineering software in a research, product, or modeling context.
  • Strong Python skills, including hands-on experience with the scientific stack (NumPy, SciPy, pandas, networkx, or similar).
  • Experience owning and maintaining a codebase with real users - internal teams, collaborators, or an external community - through multiple release cycles.
  • Experience designing data schemas and APIs used by other engineers or scientists.
  • Experience running large-scale compute workloads in AWS and/or HPC environments (SLURM or equivalent).
  • Comfortable working on Linux/UNIX systems and with modern developer tooling (Git, CI, containers).
  • Excellent communication skills and a collaborative working style, with the ability to engage deeply with domain experts across disciplines.

Preferred Qualifications
  • Master's degree or Ph.D.
  • Experience with modern data management architectures (e.g., data lakehouse patterns), metadata standards, and query engines.
  • Hands-on experience applying AI tools and agentic workflows to engineering or data pipelines.
  • Proficiency in C/C++ or another compiled language used alongside Python in scientific codebases.
  • Working knowledge of at least one of: photonic device physics, circuits, signal processing, or statistical analysis.
  • Prior work on compact models, SPICE-like simulators, or link/yield statistical modeling.

Salary range: $170,000 - $192,000
NOTE TO RECRUITERS:
Principals only. We are not accepting resumes from recruiters for this position. Remuneration for recruiting activities is only applicable subject to a signed and executed agreement between the parties. Please don't send candidates to Ayar Labs, and do not contact our managers.
Ayar Labs is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is strongly committed to all policies which will afford equal opportunity employment to all qualified persons without regard to age, sex, national origin, race, color, ethnicity, creed, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. It is the policy of Ayar Labs to provide reasonable accommodation when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with a disability, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. Veterans are more than welcome and encouraged to apply.

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