Senior Optomechanical Engineer
About The Position
K2 is seeking a Senior Optomechanical Engineer to own the design and build of precision optomechanical structures for optical payloads in space environments. This role is mechanically focused, bridging structures and optics, and involves mounting lenses and mirrors, designing supporting structures, and ensuring optical system alignment through launch and operation. The engineer will collaborate closely with optical engineers and be responsible for mechanical design, structural performance, and hardware realization. The role involves defining requirements, creating concepts, performing analysis, testing, and qualifying hardware for space missions. In the first 6 months, the engineer will define optomechanical requirements, create initial concepts and trades, perform preliminary and detailed analysis, define development test campaigns, and produce development hardware. In the first year, they will validate designs through prototype iterations and build and qualify flight hardware. In the first two years, they will fly their hardware in space while directly supporting production and integration.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical, aerospace, optical, or other relevant engineering discipline
- 5+ years of experience in mechanical or optomechanical design and analysis, with a mechanics-heavy background
- Proficiency with 3D CAD software for detailed part and assembly design
- Hands-on experience mounting optics (lenses and mirrors) and designing the structures that support them
Nice To Haves
- Proficiency with Siemens NX CAD
- Familiarity with STOP (Structural-Thermal-Optical Performance) analysis and closing pointing/wavefront error budgets across mechanical, thermal, and optical domains
- Experience designing, building, and testing precision optomechanical or opto-structural hardware for aerospace applications (satellite payloads, telescopes, imagers, or optical instruments)
- Experience with flexure design, optical bonding, and kinematic mount design for space environments
- Demonstrated ability to own optomechanical hardware or systems within an integrated engineering team outside a classroom setting
- Demonstrated understanding of structural analysis and failure modes of complex mechanical systems in space environments and operations
- Demonstrated experience designing structures for optical stability, accounting for jitter, mounting deformation, and thermal effects
- Experience with FEA for structural, modal, and thermal-elastic analysis
- Experience with the practical application of GD&T, including tolerancing of precision optical interfaces
- Demonstrated proficiency in the principles of mechanical design, materials, and structural dynamics
- Demonstrated ability to personally design, build, align, and test hardware from a blank canvas, including troubleshooting and iterating designs based on downstream feedback
Responsibilities
- Design optomechanical assemblies - optical benches, mirror mounts, lens cells, and support structures - from conceptual design through qualification to on-orbit operations, in support of internal and external customer needs
- Own mounting and alignment of lenses and mirrors, selecting and designing mounting schemes (kinematic/semi-kinematic mounts, flexures, bonded interfaces) that constrain optics without over-constraining them
- Design mirror support structures with explicit attention to jitter and dynamic stability, mount-induced deformation (bonding stress, bolt preload, gravity-release), and thermal stability (CTE matching, athermalization, gradient management)
- Own optical alignment and stability budgets, translating wavefront and pointing decisions
- Lead design reviews from kickoff through qualification and beyond
- Drive hardware development, including hands-on assembly and alignment, development testing (vibration, thermal-vac, modal), analysis correlation, and follow-on hardware iterations
- Perform hardware trades that steer both sub-system and top-level product direction
- Collaborate with a cross-functional team - optical, thermal, structures, GNC, metrology, and manufacturing - to establish product requirements, company processes, and best practices for optomechanical design and manufacturing
- Continually own and refine system deliverables and associated schedules throughout development and production
Benefits
- paid time off
- medical/dental/vision coverage
- life insurance
- paid parental leave
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
