Optical Engineer (Laser Systems)

Furientis•Los Angeles, CA

4d•Onsite

About The Position

Furientis is developing cost-effective, high-production-rate interceptor missiles to address a disparity in defensive munition production. The Seeker Team develops the missile seeker's sensing and targeting capabilities, focusing on a low-cost, mass-producible multimodal seeker that uses commercial supply chains where practical and vertical integration where possible. The team is small and deeply technical, expects engineers to take on work beyond narrow role boundaries, and values ingenuity, bias for action, and shipping flight hardware. It is also an AI-native team that expects engineers to use judgment about agentic coding tools, contribute to governance, and help build an AI-centric workflow. The Optical Engineer owns the seeker's coherent channel, from laser illumination through coherent detection, alongside the passive LWIR train. This includes the architecture, link budget, receiver, and bench demonstrations that progress toward flight hardware. The engineer specifies and integrates laser transmitters, qualifies them as channel components, and demonstrates that real hardware closes the link budget. The Laser Engineer designs the lasers; this role specifies, evaluates, and integrates them into the channel. Shared apertures and components affecting the passive train require the opto-mechanical engineer's sign-off, while the Optical Engineer owns coherent-channel performance. The position is based on-site at Furientis's Los Angeles, California headquarters; remote work is unavailable. Monthly weekend travel is required for test events and supplier engagements. A security clearance is not required, but candidates must be U.S. Persons and eligible to access export-controlled information. AI assists with application review, while humans make final hiring decisions.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Optics, Photonics, Physics, or Electrical Engineering.
At least 5 years of active EO experience in areas such as ladar, interferometry, laser rangefinders, or free-space optical links.
Fluency in laser-source characteristics, including linewidth, coherence, modulation, and associated failure modes.
Experience specifying, characterizing, and integrating pulsed lasers, including Q-switched Er:glass and seeded MOPA transmitters.
Experience designing, aligning, and integrating beam-steering devices such as Risley prisms and fast steering mirrors.
Knowledge of 1.5 µm photodetectors, including PIN and balanced receivers, linear-mode APDs, and Geiger-mode SPADs, and their noise, bandwidth, and timing tradeoffs.
Fiber and free-space optical bench skills, including alignment, isolation, and reliable measurements; experience with laser-module qualification measurements such as energy, fast-photodiode timing, beam profiling, and spectrum.
Ability to perform radiometry and link-budget analysis from first principles.
Working knowledge of laser safety, including ANSI Z136.1 classification, NOHD, and range use of Class 1M and higher-class hardware.
Sufficient signal-processing skills to take a channel from photocurrent to measurement.
Proficiency in scripting for instrument control and data processing using Python or a similar language.
Design-level Zemax skills and stray-light analysis experience using FRED, ASAP, or TracePro.
Must be a U.S. Person and eligible to access export-controlled information.

Nice To Haves

Master's or Ph.D. in Optics, Photonics, Physics, or Electrical Engineering.
Experience integrating eye-safe 1.5 µm transmitters, such as Er:glass rangefinder or designator modules, from datasheet through qualification as hardware.
Semi-active laser or designation experience.
Coherent detection theory and bench experience, including heterodyne and homodyne techniques.
Experience with flight or munition-class optical hardware.
Daily use of agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, with examples of shipped work.

Responsibilities

Architect active EO channels, including the source, modulation, transmit path, receiver, and detection scheme.
Own the end-to-end link budget and defend it with measured data.
Write the channel portion of laser transmitter specifications and interface control documents, including pulse energy, pulse width, repetition rate, timing jitter, linewidth and coherence, divergence, and the seed format a seeded MOPA amplifier must preserve.
Select and qualify laser sources, modulators, and detectors, including near-term off-the-shelf transmitters, and manage technical vendor relationships for these components.
Characterize transmitters as channel components and own channel-level acceptance, measuring energy, jitter, beam quality, and coherence over temperature and life to verify the link with hardware.
Design and build the coherent receiver, including its optical and electrical components and signal chain.
Integrate transmitters into the channel, including trigger and synchronization, a swap-ready source interface, and coordination on shared apertures, boresight, and stray light with the opto-mechanical engineer.
Develop a packaging path that takes the channel from bench demonstration to hardware capable of surviving the flight environment.
Conduct laser testing safely and legally, including classification inputs, NOHD analysis, and range safety for coherent-channel test events under the Laser Safety Officer.
Deliver coherent-channel measurements to the fusion and tracking stack with honest error models.