[Remote] Head of Education - Photonics & EM Simulation
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Flexcompute is a physics company that specializes in scaling first-principles physics into neural physics foundation models for industrial simulation and design. The Head of Education for Photonics & EM Simulation will engage with photonics researchers, professors, and students through presentations, workshops, and community building to promote the Tidy3D platform. This role involves significant travel and hands-on teaching, as well as creating educational content and fostering a user community.
Responsibilities
- Give talks, demos, and workshops at conferences (CLEO, Photonics West, IEEE Photonics, OFC, SPIE), universities, and company R&D groups
- Run hands-on sessions where researchers go from zero to a working Tidy3D simulation
- Visit university photonics, EE, and physics departments to demonstrate the platform to professors, postdocs, and grad students
- Present at seminars, lab meetings, and departmental colloquia
- Write tutorials, example notebooks, and application notes (silicon photonics, optical interconnects, metasurfaces, waveguide design, etc.)
- Record video walkthroughs and short-form demos
- Build course-ready materials that professors can drop into their syllabi
- Write blog posts, technical notes, and social content that drive awareness
- Become the face of Tidy3D in the academic photonics community
- Grow a base of student users, faculty champions, and research group adopters
- Engage on forums, GitHub, social media - wherever users have questions
- Bring feedback from the field back to the product team: what's working, what's confusing, what's missing
Skills
- PhD or Masters in photonics, optics, electrical engineering, or a closely related field
- You can explain the difference between TE and TM modes, design a directional coupler, and discuss dispersion engineering without checking your notes. You've worked with electromagnetic simulation in your own research
- Fluent in Python - You can write and debug simulation scripts live in front of an audience. You've used Jupyter notebooks for research. You can walk a student through their first API call
- Hands-on photonic simulation experience - You've designed and simulated photonic devices - waveguides, resonators, couplers, gratings, or similar. You've used tools like Lumerical, COMSOL, Ansys HFSS, RSoft, Meep, or similar, and you understand FDTD, FEM, or eigenmode solvers at a working level, not just conceptually
- A natural presenter - You're the person who volunteered to give the group meeting talk. You enjoy being in front of a room. You can make a complex topic accessible without dumbing it down. People leave your talks wanting to try the thing you showed them
- Energized by travel - Conferences, campus visits, and lab tours are the parts of the job you look forward to, not the parts you tolerate. You see face time as the highest-leverage activity
- Self-directed - Nobody is going to hand you a list of universities to visit or talks to submit. You'll identify the opportunities, pitch the abstracts, book the travel, and show up prepared. You thrive with autonomy
- Experience in technical evangelism, developer relations, or academic outreach
- Existing relationships within university photonics/EE departments
- Background in silicon photonics, optical interconnects, or AI datacenter architecture
- Experience with Tidy3D
- Published research using electromagnetic simulation
- Experience creating video tutorials or technical content
- Familiarity with agentic AI, LLM-based tools, or AI-assisted design workflows
- Experience with multi-physics simulation (thermal, structural, RF)
Benefits
- Competitive compensation with equity of a fast-growing startup.
- Medical, dental, and vision health insurance.
- 401(k) Contribution.
- Gym allowance.
- Friendly, thoughtful, and intelligent coworkers.
Company Overview