Principal Module and FA Lead

About the role

As Xscape Photonics scales to volume production, this role owns module integration and system-level failure analysis across mechanical, electrical, thermal, firmware, and optical/photonics domains during the pre-production and early-volume phases — before ownership transitions to the NPI team as manufacturing shifts to contract-manufacturing-driven high volume.

What you'll do

• Serve as the focal point for module integration and system-level failure triage: quickly diagnose issues that span multiple domains, determine ownership, and convene the right cross-functional team to drive resolution
• Own system-level integration of the module — ensuring mechanical, electrical, thermal, firmware, and optical/photonics subsystems come together to meet spec, and resolving integration-stage issues (fit, interface, tolerance stack-up, cross-domain interactions) before they surface as field or production failures
• Work with the NPI team to establish module integration procedures and KPIs — entry/exit criteria between build stages, integration test flow, and the metrics used to track integration health — so they carry forward cleanly as products move into CM-driven volume
• Partner with design engineers across mechanical, electrical, thermal, firmware, and optical/photonics to evaluate system-level trade-offs and diagnostics that guide failure analysis and debugging
• Lead structured root-cause investigations using fishbone analysis and staged, resource-aware design of experiments — screening designs to triage candidate variables before committing to full characterization runs
• Lead data analysis to verify root-cause hypotheses, and drive countermeasures to closure — tracking implementation through to actual design or process changes by the accountable owning team, rather than treating a documented finding as the end state. Feed learnings forward into NPI's process-refinement work to reduce repeat failure modes during the contract-manufacturing transition
• Own the FA documentation and trend-tracking system — build this from scratch, as no formal infrastructure exists yet
• Define and maintain clear handoff criteria to the NPI team as products transition from pre-production/small-volume to CM-driven high-volume manufacturing

What success looks like

• Integration issues (fit, interface, tolerance stack-up, cross-domain interactions) are caught and resolved pre-production, reducing the volume of cross-domain failures that reach FA
• Module integration procedures and KPIs are established jointly with NPI and hold up across the pre-production-to-volume transition, without needing to be re-defined at handoff
• Faster time-to-root-cause as the FA process matures, with a documentation/trend-tracking system that catches repeat failure modes early
• Root causes reliably close the loop into real design or process changes — not findings that sit unimplemented
• Clean handoffs to NPI at the CM transition, with repeat failure modes declining over time as FA learnings inform NPI's process work

What you'll need

• BS+15 / MS+12 / PhD+9 years in hardware failure analysis, systems engineering, or related root-cause engineering roles. Degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics/Applied Physics, Materials Science, Optical Engineering, or related field. PhD candidates should demonstrate post-degree industry experience spanning multiple engineering domains, not solely depth in a single research area.
• Working technical fluency across mechanical, electrical, thermal, and firmware domains; photonics/optical experience strongly preferred
• Demonstrated experience leading cross-domain root-cause investigations on coupled, multi-variable failure modes — not siloed single-domain diagnosis
• Hands-on, methodical technical practice: personally runs test and measurement setups, and defaults to a repeatable, structured problem-solving method under pressure rather than ad hoc troubleshooting
• Practical experience designing and prioritizing DOEs under real-world constraints — limited samples, long test cycles, many candidate variables
• Comfortable building quick first-principles models (thermal, electrical, mechanical) to test a hypothesis or narrow candidate variables before committing to physical test time — not dependent on physical data alone to build confidence
• Track record of closing the loop from root cause to actual design/process change and engineering change control, including standing up processes or infrastructure from scratch in an early-stage or resource-constrained environment

Nice to have

• Direct photonics/optical packaging experience (fiber coupling, wire-bond/die-attach processes, epoxy and encapsulation materials)
• Pragmatic judgment on depth vs. speed — knows when "good enough root cause + corrective action" beats chasing full certainty under schedule pressure
• Collaborative, root-cause-first mindset over a "quality enforcement" mindset