Senior Software Engineer

About Voyant Photonics

Voyant Photonics, based in the heart of New York City, is transforming machine perception with a new class of LiDAR devices that are compact enough to fit in the palm of your hand and powerful enough to measure range, velocity, and reflectivity with unparalleled accuracy. By leveraging cutting-edge silicon photonic chips smaller than your fingertip, we deliver sensors that are not only revolutionary in performance but also affordable enough to integrate into any system.

Our technology disrupts the status quo of bulky, expensive, and power-hungry LiDAR systems, making high-precision sensing accessible for widespread adoption in robotics, autonomous vehicles, drones, industrial automation, and beyond. With Voyant, the next generation of machines can see, understand, and navigate the world like never before.

Discover how we’re redefining what’s possible by making real products out of cutting edge research in silicon photonics.

Position Overview

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll develop the software that connects advanced LiDAR hardware to real-world applications. You’ll work across the full stack, from APIs and data pipelines to developer tools and testing frameworks, with a focus on performance, reliability, and ease of integration. The role offers broad technical exposure, significant ownership of design and implementation, and the opportunity to influence both product direction and technical decisions. You’ll see your work have immediate impact in customer deployments while collaborating closely with a small, fast-moving, and high performing engineering team.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain APIs and SDKs that enable seamless integration of our LiDAR sensors into customer applications

• Implement efficient data processing pipelines and optimize networking protocols, data serialization, and performance for real-time, low-latency sensor data streaming

• Build comprehensive testing frameworks and automated quality assurance systems for hardware-software integration

• Create and maintain technical documentation, integration guides, and developer resources to support customer adoption

• Develop internal tools for calibration, diagnostics, and manufacturing support

• Deploy and maintain production systems using modern DevOps practices including CI/CD and containerization

• Collaborate across the engineering team to solve diverse technical challenges as startup priorities evolve

Qualifications

• 3+ years of software engineering experience with strong problem-solving skills across multiple domains

• Proficiency in systems programming languages (Rust or C++) for performance-critical applications

• Experience building user-facing applications and tools, preferably with modern frameworks

• Solid understanding of API design, documentation, and SDK development with experience shipping production APIs or SDKs used by external developers

• Strong background in software testing, debugging, and performance optimization

• Experience with data processing, serialization formats, and networking fundamentals

• Proficiency with version control, CI/CD pipelines, and collaborative development practices

• Familiar with networking infrastructure including UDP, Ethernet, and NTP/PTP protocols

• Excellent communication skills and ability to work directly with customers and partners

• Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment with changing priorities

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with robotics, sensor systems, or hardware-software integration

• Knowledge of point cloud processing libraries (PCL) or computer vision frameworks

• Experience with ROS/ROS2 ecosystem and robotics development

• Background in data visualization or building technical user interfaces

• Experience with embedded or real-time systems, particularly on edge computing platforms like Jetson

• Understanding of serialization protocols (Protocol Buffers, FlatBuffers, Cap'n Proto)

• Proficiency with performance profiling, debugging tools, and system optimization (e.g., Valgrind, perf, or language-specific profilers)

Benefits package

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity package

• Comprehensive health benefits (Medical, Dental, Vision)

• Unlimited PTO and paid company holidays

• Team events and company meetups

• Hybrid or remote work environment with monthly travel for remote employees.

• Complimentary lunch provided daily at our NYC office

Equal Opportunity Employer

Voyant Photonics is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital or partnership status, age, national origin, citizenship, veteran or military status, disability, medical condition, genetic information, caregiver status, or any other characteristic protected by law.