Optical Engineer Directed Energy

At MITRE, your passion fuels work that impacts our nation and improves lives. This is where your skills strengthen national security, cybersecurity, health, transportation, and citizen services. We’re a nonprofit engineering, applied research, and advanced technology organization working in the public interest. With objectivity and integrity at our core, we lead federally funded research and development centers for U.S. government agencies – collaborating with industry and academia to deliver integrated, high-impact solutions that advance our nation’s health, security, and prosperity.

Our people tackle the toughest technical challenges, supported by competitive benefits, meaningful career development, and a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence. Choose MITRE for a career with purpose — and help shape the future.

MITRE Technology and Engineering inspires breakthroughs in applied science and advanced technology to transform the future of U.S. scientific and economic leadership. Our goal: innovation from sea to space to support our mission of serving in the public interest. In addition to executing on a rich set of challenges through the six Federal Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) that MITRE operates on behalf of its sponsors, MITRE Technology and Engineering works with broader federal, state, and local government to develop robust partnerships with industry and academia to drive impact in the public interest.

In support of this mission, MITRE Technology and Engineering operates several Innovation Centers which focus on various technologies. The Emerging Technologies Innovation Center (ETIC) focuses on emerging technologies that can provide transformational solutions to MITRE sponsors in the mid to long term. The Chemical and Optical Sciences (CH&OS) Department within ETIC provides innovative solutions to address new opportunities and challenges associated with these and other novel emerging technologies.

The CH&OS 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. To meet increased demand, we are looking to hire an Optics expert that understands capabilities associated with optical warfare. Specifically, a focus on directed energy (DE) high-power laser systems and their enabling technologies.

The successful candidate will combine deep technical expertise with the ability to identify emerging sponsor needs, develop new work, lead multidisciplinary teams, and build trusted relationships across government, industry, academia, national laboratories, and other research organizations. The role will encompass physics-based modeling and simulation, system analysis, development of laboratory and field-representative testbeds, experimental validation, technology assessment, and transition planning.

• Lead multidisciplinary teams performing analysis, modeling, experimentation, prototyping, and systems engineering for high-power laser systems and associated technologies.
• Oversee the development and application of physics-based models for laser sources, beam propagation, atmospheric effects, beam control, adaptive optics, pointing and tracking, thermal management, optical performance, and system effectiveness.
• Establish sound modeling and simulation practices, including verification, validation, sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, configuration management, and comparison with experimental or operational data.
• Lead the design, integration, and operation of small-scale laboratory or field-representative testbeds used to evaluate key technologies, validate models, reduce technical risk, and demonstrate system concepts.
• Define test objectives, performance metrics, instrumentation requirements, data-collection plans, and analysis methods for high-power laser experiments and demonstrations.
• Conduct system-level analyses and trade studies addressing performance, size, weight, power, cooling, reliability, beam quality, maintainability, safety, cost, manufacturability, and operational suitability.
• Assess the maturity, limitations, and mission relevance of emerging laser sources, optical components, beam directors, sensors, control systems, materials, coatings, power systems, and thermal-management technologies.
• Advise government sponsors on technical strategy, investment…