Silicon-Photonics Supply-Chain Diligence Director

The mandate

The investment committee cannot determine whether a proposed silicon-photonics platform can support the target volume curve without fragile single points across foundry process, external laser supply, fibre attach, advanced packaging and optical test. The narrow problem is to test the supply claims supporting the transaction case, not to value the whole company or redesign its products.

The deliverable is an independent supply-chain diligence opinion with evidence lineage, capacity and yield sensitivities, make-versus-partner dependencies, concentration risks, qualification constraints, contractual exposures and a 24-month mitigation cost. A red-flag annex must separate remediable execution gaps from assumptions that invalidate the volume thesis.

By the end of week two, milestone one will provide a claim-to-evidence map and data-gap notice. Milestone two, due in week six, will contain supplier interviews, site observations and a stress-tested capacity-yield model; milestone three, due at week ten, will deliver the signed opinion, mitigation plan and investment-committee presentation.

The Group Strategy Director and procurement vice-president will accept the work only if model outputs reconcile to sampled purchase, yield and throughput records; every critical dependency has an owner, cost and lead time; and downside cases can be rerun by the client. A management narrative without primary evidence or an unactionable risk list will be rejected.

The client will maintain the data room, secure management and supplier access, provide optical and finance counterparts, and clear permitted disclosures under transaction confidentiality. Legal diligence, transaction valuation, product-performance certification and post-close implementation are not included.

Why this is external work

The buyer's optical engineers understand product performance, while procurement knows incumbent suppliers, but neither is independent of the internal sponsorship for the transaction. The proposed scale also reaches beyond the group's direct silicon-photonics ramp experience. External authorship gives the investment committee one integrated, challengeable supply opinion before capital is committed.

What you will own

• Reconcile management's volume thesis to observed wafer starts, cycle time, assembly capacity, test throughput, scrap and yield-learning assumptions.
• Trace each critical optical and packaging input to qualified sources, substitution lead times, tooling ownership and contractual allocation rights.
• Test external-laser, fibre-attach and thermal-path dependencies against representative failure, delay and geopolitical disruption scenarios.
• Inspect supplier and target evidence in Hsinchu, recording contradictory observations and confidence grades rather than averaging disagreements away.
• Build a client-rerunnable capacity-yield model linking demand ramps to bottleneck tools, engineering lots and qualification windows.
• Quantify mitigation choices for second source, inventory, reserved capacity, design portability and supplier-development intervention.
• Deliver a signed investment opinion stating deal-critical conditions, post-close priorities and uncertainties the evidence cannot resolve.

Candidate qualifications

• Led operational or technical diligence for a semiconductor, photonics, optical-component or advanced-packaging investment of material scale.
• Ran silicon-photonics or adjacent optical-hardware industrialisation across foundry, package, attach and test stages through customer qualification.
• Built bottom-up capacity models that reconciled supplier claims to tool throughput, cycle time, yield and engineering-demand evidence.
• Challenged single-source and allocation risk through technical portability, qualification timing and contract analysis rather than generic supplier scoring.
• Conducted sensitive management and supplier interviews under transaction controls and preserved a defensible evidence trail for investment committees.
• Can demonstrate a prior diligence conclusion that altered price, conditions, integration priorities or the decision to stop a transaction.

Non-negotiables

• Available for four on-site supplier days in the Taipei–Hsinchu corridor within the ten-week timetable.
• Independent of the target, its investors and the foundry, packaging and laser suppliers material to the transaction.
• Will sign the final opinion and identify evidence limitations instead of relying on management representations.
• Can commit named capacity through all three milestones and begin within four weeks of data-room opening.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe the silicon-photonics or optical supply diligence you led and the claim that primary evidence disproved.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you reconcile stated package capacity with mixed-product tool demand and uncertain yield in the first two weeks?
3. 49 words maximum. Disclose any current relationship with a relevant foundry, packaging provider, laser supplier, target or investor.