Photonics Engineer - Experimental Statistician

About Xanadu:

Xanadu’s mission is to build useful quantum computers. We are a team of learners, innovators, and problem solvers, creating technology that has never been built before. Few people get to be a part of something like this—a journey where success can lead to solving some of the world's most challenging problems and fundamentally changing the world

Your role and responsibilities:

As a Photonics Engineer - Experimental Statistician in the photonics integration group, you will join the Test and Measurement team to drive the iteration of on-chip photonic devices—the foundational building blocks of Xanadu's Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer. This is a software-centric role requiring expertise in statistical modeling to extract device performance and fabrication variability with quantified uncertainties. This analysis will inform future experimental design and guide iteration toward ambitious device performance targets. You will be instrumental in automating and streamlining these analyses at scale to lower design-iteration times and extract insights from large experimental datasets.

• Apply statistical expertise to design experiments for extracting key performance metrics. 
• Collaborate with physicists and engineers to apply statistical techniques and guide critical design decisions.  
• Develop, validate, and deploy scalable statistical models to characterize performance and fabrication variability in photonic devices.
• Build hierarchical models to separate different sources of variability in device performance.
• Contribute to robust, documented Python software libraries for automated, large-scale data analysis pipelines.
• Quantify uncertainties, build noise models for measurements.

Basic qualifications and experience:

• Education: MSc or PhD in Statistics, Physics, Astronomy, Data Science or related field.
• Experience: 4+ years of experience working with statistics and experiment-based data.
• Expertise in Statistical Inference:
  • Inverse problem/parameter inference. 
  • Likelihood estimation. 
  • Hierarchical modelling.
  • Sampling techniques such as MCMCs.
  • Outlier detection and rejection. 
  • Estimation of confidence intervals and credible intervals. 
• Strong programming skills. 
  • Fluency with software data structures and design principles.
  • Experience with Git and the pull request workflow.
  • Fluency with python data analysis libraries such as NumPy, SciPy, and pandas.
  • Applicants will be expected to demonstrate proficiency writing python code.
• Detail and documentation oriented. 
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced research environment.

Preferred qualifications and experience:

• PhD in Statistics, Physics, Astronomy, Data Science or related field.
• Direct experience with optical or photonic experiment and theory or analogous physical theory. 
• Experience building statistical models using scientific data. 
• Experience developing performant software for analyzing large physical data sets.