Field Application Engineer - High Speed Interconnects

About the role

As a Customer Facing Application Engineer – Optical Interconnects, you will apply your technical expertise and customer engagement skills to support innovative interconnect solutions across data center, networking, and other high-performance connectivity applications.

Responsibilities

• Serving as a technical interface between 3M and customers for optical interconnect solutions, with a primary emphasis on optical fiber technologies and expanded beam optics.
• Supporting customer design-in activities for fiber optic connectivity, optical transport, and high-speed communication systems.
• Providing technical consultation to customers, sales teams, and channel partners on product selection, application fit, system integration, and performance optimization.
• Driving adoption of 3M interconnect solutions by understanding customer architectures, technical requirements, and next-generation roadmap needs.
• Collaborating with product development, R&D, manufacturing, quality, and marketing teams to communicate customer needs and influence future product direction.
• Leading technical discussions, product demonstrations, evaluations, and troubleshooting efforts for customer applications involving optical and copper interconnects.
• Supporting qualification activities by developing test plans, analyzing results, and ensuring customer requirements are met with validated data.
• Assisting customers in resolving field and application issues through hands-on technical problem-solving and cross-functional coordination.
• Providing application guidance related to product design, manufacturing processes, and process capability considerations to support successful product implementation and customer adoption.
• Contributing to technical documentation, application notes, customer presentations, and training materials to support product deployment and market adoption.
• Monitoring industry trends, competitive technologies, and emerging standards in optical fiber interconnects and high-speed data communication.
• Ensuring 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).
• 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.
• Must be legally authorized to work in country of employment without sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H1B status).

Preferred qualifications

• Bachelor'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 optical connectivity for communications systems.
• Strong knowledge of optical fiber interconnects, transceiver connectivity, cable assemblies, and data center optical infrastructure.
• Experience in process engineering or process development for optical, fiber optic, or precision interconnect technologies, including process design, scale-up, optimization, qualification, validation, and transfer to manufacturing.
• Experience transferring technical knowledge and delivering technical training related to production processes, including developing training materials, providing hands-on instruction, and communicating process requirements, best practices, and troubleshooting methods to manufacturing, engineering, and customer teams.
• 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.
• Experience with optical test equipment and performance characterization of optical or interconnect systems.
• 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.
• Experience developing and delivering technical presentations to customers, internal stakeholders, and external partners.
• Strong communication skills, including oral, written, and presentation skills.
• Ability to work effectively across global, cross-functional teams.

Pay & benefits

• Expected compensation range: $145,676 - $178,049, which includes base pay plus variable incentive pay, if eligible.
• Benefits may include: Medical, Dental & Vision, Health Savings Accounts, Health Care & Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts, Disability Benefits, Life Insurance, Voluntary Benefits, Paid Absences and Retirement Benefits.

Work location: May work remote within the United States. Travel: May include up to 15% domestic/international. Relocation Assistance: May be authorized.