Application Engineer – High-Speed Interconnects

About the role

The Application Engineer – High-Speed Interconnects plays a crucial role in supporting innovative interconnect solutions across various applications. This position offers an opportunity to transition from other professional backgrounds into a 3M career.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a technical interface between 3M and customers for high-speed interconnect solutions, including both copper and optical fiber, with a primary emphasis on optical fiber technologies.
• Support customer design-in activities for fiber optic connectivity, optical transport, and high-speed communication systems.
• Provide technical consultation to customers, sales teams, and channel partners on product selection, application fit, system integration, and performance optimization.
• Drive adoption of 3M interconnect solutions by understanding customer architectures, technical requirements, and next-generation roadmap needs.
• Collaborate with product development, R&D, manufacturing, quality, and marketing teams to communicate customer needs and influence future product direction.
• Lead technical discussions, product demonstrations, evaluations, and troubleshooting efforts for customer applications involving optical and copper interconnects.
• Support qualification activities by developing test plans, analyzing results, and ensuring customer requirements are met with validated data.
• Assist customers in resolving field and application issues through hands-on technical problem-solving and cross-functional coordination.
• Contribute to technical documentation, application notes, customer presentations, and training materials to support product deployment and market adoption.
• Maintain awareness of industry trends, competitive technologies, and emerging standards in optical fiber interconnects, copper connectivity, and high-speed data communication.
• Ensure technical claims in customer-facing literature and communications are accurate, well-supported, and aligned with product performance.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or higher (completed and verified prior to start) from an accredited institution.
• Three (3) years of experience in a customer-facing technical, applications engineering, systems engineering, or product support role in a private, public, government, or military environment.
• Two (2) years of experience with high-speed interconnect technologies, including optical fiber and/or copper connectivity solutions.
• Current, valid Driver’s License.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or higher in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field from an accredited institution.
• Five (5) or more years of experience in fiber optics for communications systems.
• Strong knowledge of optical fiber interconnects, transceiver connectivity, cable assemblies, and data center optical infrastructure.
• Familiarity with data center systems architecture, networking, AI infrastructure, and high-performance computing environments.
• Experience interpreting industry standards, qualification requirements, and test methods related to fiber optic and electrical interconnect components.
• Ability to analyze customer requirements and translate them into application guidance and product recommendations.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills in customer and field environments.
• Strong communication skills, including oral, written, and presentation skills.
• Ability to work effectively across global, cross-functional teams.

Benefits

Includes a comprehensive range of benefits such as medical, dental, vision, health savings accounts, flexible spending accounts, disability benefits, life insurance, voluntary benefits, paid absences, and retirement benefits. Details are available at this link.

Pay

The expected compensation range for this position is $145,676 - $178,049, which includes base pay plus variable incentive pay, if eligible. Specific compensation offered may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, the candidate’s relevant knowledge, training, skills, work location, and/or experience. For more details, see this link.

Schedule

This position is remote – Bay Area, California, Northern California or Washington including Seattle. Travel may include up to 15% domestic/international.

Application Instructions

To apply, please ensure you provide your education and work history as part of your application. For assistance with searching through our current job openings or for more information about all things 3M, visit Max, our virtual recruiting assistant on 3M.com/careers.