Optical Engineer (Laser Systems)

Furientis•Los Angeles, CA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

Furientis is hiring an Optical Engineer for its Seeker Team, which develops the optical sensing and targeting systems for a low-cost, mass-producible missile seeker. The role owns the seeker’s coherent channel from laser illumination through coherent detection, including the active EO path alongside the passive LWIR train. Responsibilities span channel architecture, link budgets, receiver design, and bench demonstrations that progress toward flight hardware. The engineer serves as the laser transmitters’ technical customer and integrator: defining transmitter requirements, demonstrating that selected or built lasers close the channel link budget, and integrating transmitters into the channel. The Laser Engineer designs the lasers; this role specifies, evaluates, and integrates them. Shared apertures and interfaces with the passive optical train require coordination and opto-mechanical sign-off. The team is small, deeply technical, and AI-native, with broad responsibilities and a bias toward action. The position is on-site at Furientis’s Los Angeles headquarters; remote work is unavailable. Monthly weekend travel is required for test events and supplier engagements. A clearance is not required, but the applicant must be a U.S. Person and eligible to access export-controlled information.

Requirements

B.S. in Optics, Photonics, Physics, or Electrical Engineering; M.S. or Ph.D. preferred.
At least 5 years of active EO experience in ladar, interferometry, laser rangefinders, or free-space optical links.
Fluency in laser-source 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 (FSMs).
Fluency with 1.5 µm photodetectors, including PIN and balanced receivers, linear-mode APDs, and Geiger-mode SPADs, and their noise, bandwidth, and timing characteristics.
Fiber and free-space optical bench skills, including alignment, isolation, and reliable measurement; laser-module qualification measurements such as energy, fast-photodiode timing, beam profiling, and spectrum.
Ability to perform radiometry and first-principles link-budget analysis.
Working knowledge of laser safety, including ANSI Z136.1 classification, NOHD, and range use of Class 1M and higher hardware.
Signal-processing skills sufficient to take channel data from photocurrent to measurement.
Proficiency with Python or similar for instrument control and data processing.
Design-level Zemax proficiency 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

M.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 hardware qualification.
Semi-active laser or designation experience.
Coherent detection theory and bench experience with 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 substantiate it with measured data.
Write the channel portion of the laser transmitter specification and interface control document (ICD), including pulse energy, pulse width, repetition rate, timing jitter, linewidth and coherence, divergence, and required seed format.
Select and qualify laser sources, modulators, and detectors, including near-term off-the-shelf transmitters; manage the 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 link performance 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 source interface that permits swapping a purchased laser for an internally developed laser without redesigning the channel, and coordination on shared apertures, boresight, and stray light.
Advance the channel from bench demonstration toward a packaging path that can withstand 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.
Provide opinions and governance input on appropriate uses of AI coding tools and help build an AI-centric workflow.