Ciena is committed to our people-first philosophy. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a personalized and flexible work environment that empowers an individual’s passions, growth, wellbeing and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

Optical Performance Scientist/Engineer

What will you do at Ciena?

Ciena is recognized as a leading supplier of state-of-the-art fiber optic transmission technology, and a key aspect of this development is assuring system performance at the optical layer. Join the Optical System Performance team and leverage our world-class lab facilities and compute resources to help advance the performance of our agile optical solutions!

As a member of the Optical System Performance team, you will be working in a fast-paced multi-disciplinary group. You will rely on your creativity and diverse range of engineering and/or physics experience to explore, model and validate solutions to optical performance questions and problems. You will interact with a wide range of research and development teams to advance Ciena’s optical transport solutions.

Your Responsibilities

This role is focused on evaluating optical system performance as measured in our labs and the development of tools that model the optical performance of customer networks. The successful candidate will:

• Participate in the development, validation, and maintenance of optical simulation tools for both existing and new products.
• Develop and help execute test plans to capture the optical system data necessary to align transmission performance models with our products.
• Analyze, visualize, and communicate line-up/simulation results.
• Investigate and help reconcile any anomalies in model line-up or system performance.
• Develop automation capabilities for performance data processing.
• Support other Ciena teams using our performance models to solve custom design requests.
• Perform viability studies for new hardware and/or software development proposals.
• Generate optical performance guidelines and budget impairment rules for modelling customer network performance.

Required Skills and Experience

BSc or MSc degree in Engineering Physics, Physics, or Electrical Engineering, with a specific interest in optics, photonics & telecommunications.

• Communication, interpersonal, and teamwork skills are essential.
• Must be able to work as an individual contributor and contribute as part of a larger team.
• Self-starter with the ability to conceive of and accept responsibility for projects and see them through to completion.
• Strong critical thinking and critical analysis skills.
• Understanding of optical systems, components, optical physics, error analysis and statistics.
• Familiarity with optical propagation physics is an asset.
• Ability to learn on the job and adapt to new challenges.
• Must have MATLAB experience (data capture, analysis, and visualization preferred), Python and/or C/C++ experience is considered an asset.
• Familiarity with Linux is an asset.
• Proven debugging and problem-solving skills.
• Undergraduate level training on the principals of digital communication systems.

Desired Characteristics

• Team player
• Independent
• Proactive
• Enthusiastic
• Articulate
• Detail oriented
• Sense of humour
• Maybe just a little bit geeky

At Ciena, we are committed to building and fostering an environment in which our employees feel respected, valued, and heard. Ciena values the diversity of its workforce and respects its employees as individuals. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.

Ciena is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status.

If contacted in relation to a job opportunity, please advise Ciena of any accommodation measures you may require.