Senior Software Engineer, Lightmatter
API
$198-256k
+ Stock Option Plan
Light-powered AI computing
Open for applications
Light-powered AI computing
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$198-256k
+ Stock Option Plan
201-500 employees
Company mission
Lightmatter's mission is to build an engine that will power discoveries, drive progress, and redefine what computers and human beings are capable of.
Role
Who you are
- BS and 12+ years of experience or MS and 8+ years of experience
- Proficiency in API development using systems/environments focused on API design and performance optimization (e.g., OpenAPI, RESTful services, API Gateway, microservices architecture)
- Strong understanding of API design principles and best practices for building scalable, secure, and high-performance services
- Experience with security protocols (OAuth, JWT) and data encryption techniques
- Expertise in real-time data handling, including WebSockets or similar technologies
Desirable
- Experience building backend services for web applications like Next.js
What the job involves
- In this role, you will develop the API that bridges photonic hardware and advanced interface systems, ensuring seamless communication between hardware and software
- Your work will enable efficient processing of real-time and historical data, playing a key part in driving innovation within photonic AI and computing
- By creating the foundation for dynamic data transfer, you will contribute to the future growth and breakthroughs in this cutting-edge technology
- API Design & Development: Architect, build, and maintain APIs to support the flow of live data and historical data (from a database) between backend services and the frontend Next.js application, focusing on dynamic data fetching
- Hardware Monitoring & Management: Focus on developing APIs that represent hardware systems, providing essential capabilities for monitoring and management of those systems
- Backend Service Development: Design and implement scalable backend services, ensuring efficient communication between microservices and the frontend
- Security & Authentication: Implement robust security protocols such as OAuth and JWT to ensure secure access to APIs. Emphasize data encryption and secure API endpoints
- Real-Time Data Processing: Develop solutions for handling real-time data, integrating technologies like WebSockets to enable low-latency data transmission between backend services and the frontend
- Collaboration with Front-End Teams: Work closely with the frontend team to ensure seamless integration of backend APIs with the application, particularly in the areas of dynamic data fetching and processing
- Testing & Documentation: Write automated tests to ensure the reliability and performance of APIs. Maintain clear and concise documentation for API usage to support the frontend and internal teams
- Performance Optimization: Continuously monitor and optimize API performance to reduce response times and improve system scalability
Our take
Neural networks and CPUs are vital to AI solutions, but manufacturers have largely failed to maintain innovation in recent years. Lightmatter solves this problem by offering a next-generation computing platform powered by photonics (light waves).
Lightmatter offers a forward-facing platform for AI-building that acts as an alternative to traditional solutions. It works by replacing wired CPUs with a combination of photonics and new algorithms. Lightmatter's solution is not only faster, but it is considerably more sustainable, and it has the potential to drive the next generation of AI development.
As of 2025, Lightmatter has raised $850 million across six funding rounds and grown to a staggering valuation of $4.4 billion, a testament to growing industry demand for faster, more effective AI-building solutions. Lightmatter currently has three products on the market - Envise, Passage, and Idiom - and is poised to take on the incumbent chiplet industry with a photonics-based alternative.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Oct 2024
$400m
SERIES D
Dec 2023
$155m
SERIES C
Total funding: $822m
Company benefits
- Commuter benefit
- Happy hour -Spend time together and build friendships
- Generous vacation policy and holidays
- 401(K)
- Opportunity to learn from your peers and teach them what you know across electronics, photonics, machine learning, and more
Company values
- WORK WIDE & PARALLEL: Working on hard problems, we have to go down many different paths quickly to find the right one.
- QUESTION EVERYTHING: People have opinions about what things work and what things don’t work. They’re not always right.
- LET FIRST PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOU: Stand behind statements that you know are true and build something amazing.
- DON'T BE DEFINED BY YOUR JOB TITLE: Many great ideas occur at the boundaries between disciplines.
- BE KIND: Help build the environment you want to work in.
- TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR WORK: Everyone’s contributions are critical to the company’s success.
Company HQ
Old Mountain View, Mountain View, CA
Articles
Leadership
Nicholas Harris
(CEO & Co-Founder)Previously worked as an R&D Product Engineer at Micron Technology, and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT.
Thomas Graham
(Co-Founder)Was an M&A Analyst at Morgan Stanley, and worked as an Agency Business Development Manager at Google.
Darius Bunandar
(Chief Scientist & Co-Founder)Worked as a Research Collaborator at Caltech, and was a PhD Candidate at MIT.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 14 more jobs at Lightmatter