Senior EO/IR Optical Engineer - Level V

Build Optical Systems That Actually Fly

Orion Space Solutions designs and builds operational space payloads for national security and advanced sensing missions. Our instruments fly on orbit and deliver mission-critical data for government and commercial customers.

We are looking for a top-tier EO/IR Optical Engineer who can own the optical answer from model to measurement to flight hardware. This is not a generic lens-design role. You will work on real payloads, real test data, real alignment problems, and real mission performance.

This role is focused on non-sequential ray tracing, optical metrology, interferometry, stray-light control, and payload verification. You will help extend Orion’s capability in EO/IR payloads, narrowband imaging systems, Fabry-Perot / etalon-based instruments, optical benches, and contamination-sensitive flight or prototype hardware.

If you want to build models that drive hardware decisions - and then see those decisions tested in the lab and flown in space - this is the job.

Why Orion:

• Your work flies in space.
• Small, high-talent engineering teams with direct ownership of mission hardware.
• Fast-moving programs solving hard EO/IR sensing, calibration, and payload problems.
• A technical environment where modeling, metrology, and hardware have to converge.

Responsibilities

• Build, maintain, and validate FRED non-sequential optical models for EO/IR payloads, optical benches, baffles, filters, detectors, calibration sources, and flight-like test setups.
• Perform stray-light, ghost, scatter, vignetting, detector-irradiance, and baffle analyses that directly influence hardware design.
• Model realistic coatings, apertures, stops, source geometries, CAD structures, surface scatter, BRDF/BSDF data, and detector response maps.
• Plan and execute optical metrology for lenses, mirrors, windows, filters, etalons, optical flats, optical benches, and assembled payloads.
• Use interferometric methods to evaluate surface figure, transmitted wavefront error, wedge, parallelism, optical alignment, and system-level wavefront performance.
• Support PSF, MTF, spectral transmission, radiometric, and stray-light testing for prototype, engineering, and flight hardware.
• Develop alignment plans, test procedures, verification matrices, supplier acceptance criteria, and optical analysis reports.
• Work directly with optical, mechanical, thermal, detector, software, manufacturing, quality, and program teams in rapid design-build-test cycles.
• Help solve hard optical performance problems when the model, metrology data, hardware, and schedule do not initially agree.

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a computer engineering or computer science field plus 12-15 years, MS plus 10-13 years, or PhD plus 10+ years of professional experience in software engineering for high-reliability space and aerospace applications.
• Direct experience with FRED or equivalent non-sequential optical modeling tools; FRED experience is strongly preferred.
• Experience with stray-light, ghost, scatter, baffle, or detector-irradiance analysis.
• Hands-on optical metrology or interferometry experience, including test setup, data interpretation, and error-source diagnosis.
• Ability to interpret and specify surface figure, TWE, wedge, parallelism, roughness, coating performance, spectral transmission, PSF, and MTF.
• Ability to convert analysis and test results into engineering decisions, tolerances, procurement specifications, and verification evidence.
• Clear technical writing and the ability to brief results to scientists, engineers, program managers, customers, and suppliers.

Preferred

• Experience with space payloads, satellite instrumentation, missile-warning, remote-sensing, or national-security optical systems.
• Experience with Fabry-Perot etalons, interferometers, narrowband imaging systems, hyperspectral/spectral instruments, or high-stability optical benches.
• Experience using Fizeau or phase-shifting interferometers, autocollimators, spectrometers, monochromators, integrating spheres, collimators, or detector test stations.
• Familiarity with Zemax OpticStudio, CODE V, MATLAB, Python, SolidWorks/CAD import workflows, optical coating data, and ISO 10110 optical specifications.
• Experience supporting environmental test, thermal vacuum, vibration, cleanroom optical handling, contamination control, supplier acceptance, or AS9100 development environments.
• Incomplete information, aggressive schedules, and hardware that needs to work the first time.
• Working at the boundary between optical design, lab metrology, optomechanics, contamination control, and flight qualification.
• Walking from a FRED model into the lab, looking at the hardware, and closing the loop with measured data.
• Owning technical closure rather than waiting for someone else to define the next step.

If you want to do serious optical engineering on systems that leave the ground, Orion is the place to do it.

We are an equal opportunity employer and federal government contractor. We do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment as protected by law.