Optical Scientist

The MITRE Corporation • New Bedford, MA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

Why choose between doing meaningful work and having a fulfilling life? At MITRE, you can have both. That's because MITRE people are committed to tackling our nation's toughest challenges—and we're committed to the long-term well-being of our employees. MITRE is different from most technology companies. We are a not-for-profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest, with no commercial conflicts to influence what we do. The R&D centers we operate for the government create lasting impact in fields as diverse as cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. We're making a difference every day—working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world. Our workplace reflects our values. We offer competitive benefits, exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth, and a culture of innovation that embraces adaptability, collaboration, technical excellence, and people in partnership. If this sounds like the choice you want to make, then choose MITRE - and make a difference with us.
Department Summary:
MITRE Lab’s Quantum Information Sciences, Optics, and Imaging Department serves as a vanguard for MITRE to meet the future needs of our customers, requiring technical excellence while encouraging creativity and fostering interests in current and emerging technologies across its diverse employees. Your future colleagues are a collegial team from an array of technical backgrounds who work across MITRE’s sponsors and partners.
The MITRE Corporation is seeking a smart, energetic scientist or engineer with experience in semiconductor lasers and/or optical physics to work in a dynamic environment, which encourages creativity and requires keeping pace with current and emerging technologies and practices. Work will include iterative design and testing of semiconductor laser systems for applications in directed energy and optical communication. There may be additional opportunities to develop photonic systems or develop modeling and simulation tools.
The candidate will work in the public interest to provide technical expertise in solving our sponsors’ critical directed energy problems.

Requirements

• Requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Applicants selected for this position will be subject to a government security investigation and must meet U.S. citizenship requirements for access to classified information.
• Understanding of semiconductor laser systems, optical physics, and optical system modeling & simulation.
• The ability to conceive and execute laboratory experiments within the context of a larger effort pertaining to optical system research.
• Experience with the design, evaluation, and integration of semiconductor lasers.
• Strong technical writing and oral presentation skills.
• Strong interpersonal collaboration skills.
• The ability to think critically and be proactive in pursuing research and problem-solving, working independently and coordinating with MITRE leadership as appropriate.
• The ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret security clearance with additional accesses.
• This position requires a minimum of 4 days a week on-site

Nice To Haves

• Masters or PhD in Optical Science, Physics, or Electrical Engineering.
• Experience in semiconductor fabrication, with a particular preference for GaAs VCSEL design and manufacturing experience.
• Experience in the design and evaluation of directed energy systems.
• Experience with ZEMAX and Python and/or MATLAB.
• Experience in the design and evaluation of cross-cutting imaging technologies for defense, intelligence, transportation, or health.
• Top Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• The candidate will lead laboratory experimentation efforts related to semiconductor lasers, including test procedure design and execution, beam quality evaluation, test automation, failure analysis, and basic electrical integration.
• The candidate will develop optical models for simulation, and/or hardware for lab research and will leverage propagation simulation tools such as ZEMAX.
• The candidate will have a firm grasp of Fourier optics, semiconductor laser physics, and diffractive optical elements.
• The candidate will contribute to analysis of various optical systems, including integration challenges and use these analyses to provide recommendations to our sponsors.
• The candidate will evaluate directed energy systems for a wide range of missions and applications.
• The candidate will have the opportunity to propose new imaging and photonics projects within MITRE’s internal research and development program
• As needed and desired, the candidate will contribute to other optics tasks (, multimodal imaging and microscopy, optical communication, computational imaging, photonic integrated circuits, ultrafast laser systems etc.)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees