Optical Engineer (Analysis)

Impulse Space•Redondo Beach, CA

24d•$120,000 - $180,000•Onsite

About The Position

Impulse Space is seeking an Opto-Mechanical Analysis Engineer to support the development of precision optical systems for spacecraft. This role will focus on structural, thermal-elastic, and dynamic analysis of opto-mechanical assemblies optical payloads. This engineer will help ensure that optical hardware survives launch, maintains alignment through thermal and vibration environments, and performs reliably on orbit. Depending on experience level, this role may support, own, or lead analysis efforts for lens barrels, detector mounts, mirror mounts, baffles, mechanisms, and terminal-level optical assemblies. The ideal candidate has strong mechanical fundamentals, experience with FEA or structural analysis, and an interest in the intersection of mechanical design, optical performance, and spaceflight environments.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Mechanics, Physics, Optical Engineering, or related technical discipline.
Experience with structural analysis, mechanical design analysis, FEA, or thermal-mechanical analysis through coursework, internships, research, or professional work.
Strong understanding of mechanics of materials, dynamics, heat transfer, vibration, and structural behavior.
Experience with CAD or FEA tools such as NX, SolidWorks, Nastran, ANSYS, SigFIT, Femap, Simcenter 3D, or equivalent.
Ability to work with mechanical drawings, material properties, fasteners, tolerances, and physical hardware constraints.

Nice To Haves

Experience analyzing aerospace, spacecraft, optical payload, camera, telescope, lasercom, or precision instrumentation hardware.
Experience with Structural-Thermal-Optical Performance workflows using tools such as SigFit, Zemax OpticStudio, Code V, FRED, MATLAB, Python, or similar.
Experience with opto-mechanical hardware such as lens barrels, mirror mounts, flexures, bonded optics, kinematic mounts, detector mounts, optical benches, or gimbaled assemblies.

Responsibilities

Perform structural and thermal analysis on optical hardware.
Develop and maintain finite element models for flight and development hardware.
Support Structural-Thermal-Optical Performance analysis by working with optical engineers to understand alignment sensitivity, detector placement tolerances, boresight stability, wavefront error, and pointing requirements.