Job Description

Chief Technology Officer

Paraxial Seattle WA (Hybrid or Remote for exceptional candidates)

Paraxial is building the first AI-native optical design platform a modern successor to legacy tools like Zemax and Code V. Optical systems drive AR/VR LiDAR robotics aerospace and biomedical imaging yet the tools used to design them are outdated slow and fundamentally incompatible with modern compute and AI.

Were rebuilding the stack from first principles:
natural-language spec-to-model high-performance ray tracing intelligent design exploration hybrid AI tolerancing and CAD-native integration.

With hundreds of optical engineers already on the waitlist and enterprise design partners ready to begin pilots were hiring a CTO to architect and ship the beginning of the platform.

The Role

This is a hands-on technical leadership role.
You will build the first working iteration of Paraxial make the architectural decisions that define its long-term future and grow the engineering organization around your technical vision.

What Youll Own

• The end-to-end architecture of Paraxials early product

• Technical decisions across backend orchestration data modeling optimization workflows and early simulation integration

• Rapid prototyping of core workflows (spec model optimization results)

• Interfaces to external engines (ZOS-API or alternatives) and eventually modernized high-performance cores

• Early LLM integration workflows

• Development of reproducibility logging and correctness foundations

• Engineering culture documentation and hiring the first technical team

• Long-term decisions on HPC GPU ML and CAD infrastructure selecting the right tools for the job rather than adhering to a specific stack

You are responsible for building the spine of Paraxial: the architecture systems and workflows the entire company will build on.

What You Bring

Core Technical Strengths

You are a senior/principal-level engineer with deep experience building zero-to-one products in technically complex domains. You have strong command over:

• System design across backend compute and data layers

• Building and shipping simulation-heavy or data-intensive workflows

• Working with performance-sensitive code whether in C Python or another modern language

• Choosing and integrating the right technology (C Python CUDA GPU libraries ML frameworks rendering engines etc.) based on constraints

• Architecting pipelines that involve optimization numerical analysis or scientific computation

• Writing pragmatic reliable code while moving quickly

Youre not tied to one language or stack you choose the right tool for the job.

Product & Execution Strengths

• Ability to independently deliver a working product slice in weeks not quarters

• Strong intuition for glueing together APIs LLMs numerical code and UI

• Clear communication with non-software domain experts

• Bias toward shipping learning and iterating

• Comfort owning ambiguous open-ended problem spaces

Domain Knowledge (Strong Pluses)

Not required but very valuable:

• Experience with simulation rendering robotics AV computational physics or optimization

• Exposure to ray tracing geometric optics or optical system design

• Experience working in AR/VR imaging or any hardware-adjacent industry

We do not expect deep optical expertise but curiosity and ability to collaborate closely with optical engineers is essential.

In the first 3060 days you will work closely with the CEO and our optical domain expert to:

• Stand up core backend services and data models

• Build the initial Parametric Optical Model (POM) schema

• Implement a pipeline that turns a spec (form or natural language) into an optimized optical system

• Integrate with existing engines (ZOS-API or similar) for design generation and analysis

• Build a simple but functional UI for entering specs and reviewing candidate designs

• Create the first LLM-driven spec mapper for natural-language input

• Ensure correctness by working closely with optical domain knowledge

Youll write code every day while also making foundational decisions about system design performance characteristics toolchain choices and long-term architecture.

Why Join Paraxial

• Build the foundational technical architecture of a next-generation engineering platform

• Work at the intersection of physics AI simulation and human creativity

• Direct exposure to real optical engineers shaping the future of hardware

• The opportunity to reinvent an entire industrys core tools

Required Experience:

Chief

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