Director of Optical Engineering

Responsibilities

Organizational Leadership

- Build, lead, mentor, and grow the Optical Engineering team through hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.

- Establish team goals, priorities, staffing plans, and organizational capabilities aligned with company objectives .

- Develop engineering processes, design standards, documentation practices, and quality expectations for the optical engineering organization.

- Foster a culture of technical excellence, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

- Partner with executive leadership to develop long-term optical engineering strategy and organizational growth plans.

Technical Leadership

- O versee the development of optical architectures for laser beamlines, diagnostics, adaptive optics systems, beam transport systems, and related optical subsystems.

- Work with science, systems engineering, and laser teams to derive, allocate , and manage optical system requirements.

- Provide technical oversight for optical design, tolerancing, alignment strategies, and system performance analyses.

- Chair reviews of optical designs and analyses, ensuring technical rigor and adherence to performance requirements.

- Guide development of active beam control systems including adaptive optics, beam stabilization, and tracking systems.

- Ensure that requirements and specifications for optical components, coatings, imaging systems, cameras, sensors, and precision optical assemblies are established in compliance with the Xcimer Product Development Process.

- Drive resolution of complex optical performance issues through modeling, experimentation, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.

- Oversee optical system integration, alignment, verification, validation, and commissioning activities.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

- Partner with optomechanical engineering teams to optimize system performance, manufacturability, alignment accessibility, and maintainability.

- Collaborate with optical physicists, electrical engineers, controls engineers, and software engineers to develop integrated laser and diagnostic systems.

- Support supplier selection, technical evaluations, and strategic relationships with optical component vendors and manufacturing partners.

- Work closely with program management to identify risks, develop mitigation plans, and ensure successful execution of program milestones.

- Present technical status, risks, and recommendations to engineering leadership and executive stakeholders.

Qualifications

- Education: MS degree in Optical Engineering or a related technical discipline.

- Experience: 10 + years of experience in optical engineering, including optical design, analysis, integration, and testing of complex optical systems.

- Leadership: 1 5 + years of experience leading technical teams and managing engineering organizations.

- Demonstrated expertise using optical design software such as Zemax (preferred), CODE V, or equivalent tools.

- Strong experience with computational analysis tools such as MATLAB, Python, or similar engineering software.

- Deep understanding of optical design methodologies, optimization techniques, and performance metrics for imaging and laser systems.

- Experience with optical tolerancing, fabrication specifications, statistical performance analysis, and alignment sensitivity assessments.

- Experience integrating and aligning complex optical systems using instrumentation such as theodolites, autocollimators, laser trackers, interferometers, and related metrology equipment.

- Experience performing optical metrology and characterization, including interferometric measurements, surface quality assessment, scatter characterization, and precision inspection techniques.

- Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary engineering efforts from concept through integration and testing.

- Excellent communication, leadership, and organizational skills.

- Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Desired

- Ph.D. degree in Optical Engineering, Optical Science, Physics, or a related discipline.

- 15+ years of experience in optical system design, optimization, tolerancing, integration, and precision alignment.

- Experience working in a Matrix Organization delivering multiple projects and programs in parallel.

- Experience leading optical engineering organizations supporting large-scale technical programs.

- Experience designing adaptive optics systems and beam pointing stabilization systems.

- Experience performing high-fidelity physical optics modeling and wavefront propagation analyses in both near-field and far-field regimes.

- Experience with high-energy laser systems and deep ultraviolet (UV) optical systems.

- Experience developing comprehensive end-to-end optical system models and performance budgets.

- Experience defining and flowing requirements from system-level architectures to subsystem and component specifications.

- Experience supporting development of advanced scientific, aerospace, defense, fusion, or directed-energy systems.

- Demonstrated success scaling engineering teams in fast-paced, high-growth technical organizations.