Founding ML Engineer

Photonium is an Optical design automation company that allows engineers to create and design 3D mechanical structures.

Location: New York, NY
Company size: 5–10
Posted: 4w ago
Via: Yc

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Job listing · Updated 21 AUG 2026

Founding ML Engineer

Photonium· New York, NY, USView company profile

Job title: Founding ML Engineer
Job location: New York, NY, US
Job listing URL: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/photonium/jobs/JEOfTqj-founding-ml-engineer
Job description: **Company Description** Photonium builds next-generation design software for optical systems. Manually designing optical hardware is a costly bottleneck for fields like quantum computing, life sciences, LiDAR, and advanced manufacturing. We develop intuitive tools and intelligent automation to help engineers design optical systems faster and cheaper. Photonium is backed by Y Combinator (X25) and part of the NVIDIA inception program. **Role Description** This is a full-time on-site role for a Founding Machine Learning Engineer, located in NYC. The Founding ML Engineer will be responsible for the design and implementation of our optical design agent. You’ll develop ML models that generate candidate configurations, interface with simulation or analysis tools to evaluate performance, and implement learning loops to improve design outcomes over time. **What you'll do** •⁠ ⁠Develop models for generating and optimizing optical system layouts based on design goals and constraints •⁠ ⁠Build workflows to interface with simulation tools and extract performance metrics •⁠ ⁠Collaborate with optical engineers to define data structures and prepare training data **What we're looking for** •⁠ ⁠Strong experience in building and deploying ML pipelines. •⁠ ⁠Interest in optics, physics-based simulation, or generative design. •⁠ ⁠Familiarity with CAD, optics, and/or simulation tools is a plus.

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