Systems Engineer

Systems Engineer — Free-Space Optical Communication Payloads Dayton, Ohio Position Overview

We are seeking a hands-on Systems Engineer to lead the definition, integration, and verification of free-space optical communication (FSOC) payloads for space, airborne, and ground-based platforms. This is a cross-disciplinary role at the seam where optics, electronics, mechanisms, and control software meet: you will own the electrical interfaces to opto-mechanical hardware, the acquisition/tracking/pointing (ATP) control loops that close the link, and the payload-to-platform interfaces that make the terminal a well-behaved guest on its host vehicle.

We are interested in a candidates who have built this type of payload before and those who have engineered comparable optical payloads — imagers, lidar, seekers, telescopes, directed-energy or precision pointing systems — and can carry those skills across. If you have driven a sensor or optical payload from requirements through integration and field or on-orbit performance, this role is a natural next step.

• Own payload-level system engineering for FSOC terminals: requirements decomposition from link budget and mission concept down to optical, electrical, mechanical, and software subsystem specifications, with traceability maintained through verification.
• Develop and specify the electronic interfaces to opto-mechanical elements — fast steering mirrors, gimbals, Risley prisms, focus and shutter mechanisms, TECs, and photodetectors — including drive electronics, sensor conditioning, encoder and position feedback, and the timing/synchronization architecture between them.
• Architect and implement acquisition, tracking, and pointing control systems: beaconed and beacon less acquisition sequences, spatial search strategies, coarse/fine handover, closed-loop tracking on quad cells or focal-plane arrays, disturbance rejection, and jitter budgets under platform motion.
• Model and analyze control-loop performance — bandwidth allocation, latency, sampling, sensor noise, actuator authority — and validate models against bench and field measurements.
• Define and negotiate payload-to-platform interfaces: mechanical and optical mounting, power, thermal, command and data handling, time synchronization, attitude and ephemeris data exchange, and the fault management and safing behavior the host expects. Author and maintain ICDs.
• Develop pointing and error budgets that flow across host attitude knowledge and stability, structural and thermal distortion, mechanism performance, sensor noise, and residual control error.
• Lead integration and test: write and execute payload-level test procedures, bring up hardware in the lab, debug across the optical/electrical/software boundary, and characterize end-to-end link and tracking performance.
• Support environmental qualification (vibration, shock, thermal-vacuum) and interpret performance shifts back to root cause in the design.
• Work directly with optical, opto-mechanical, electrical, software, and GNC engineers, translating between their domains and holding the system-level design intent.

• B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, or a related field.
• 3+ years of systems engineering experience on optical or electro-optical payloads — free-space optical communication, lidar, imaging or remote sensing instruments, seekers, telescopes, or precision beam-steering systems.
• Demonstrated experience developing electrical interfaces between control electronics and mechanical or opto-mechanical hardware: motor and actuator drive, position sensing and encoders, analog front ends for optical detectors, and the associated signal integrity and…