Principal Electro-Optical/Adaptive Optics Engineer - Directed Energy
$190k - $220k/yr
Senior, Expert
Bachelor's
Denver, CO, USA
In PersonFull-time onsite at Denver headquarters; travel to partner facilities and test sites may be required.
Electrical Engineering
No H1B Sponsorship
US Citizenship Required
About the job
Requirements
- An advanced degree in optics, physics, electrical engineering, or a closely related field.
- At least 8 years of optical science or engineering experience, including at least 5 years in adaptive optics, wavefront sensing and control, directed energy, or closely related high-speed optical or laser control systems.
- A track record of delivering adaptive optics or beam control systems in industry, national laboratories, or observatories.
- Demonstrated ownership of adaptive optics requirements and performance budgets on a real program, including the wavefront error budget and allocation across subsystems.
- Knowledge of laser beam propagation through atmospheric turbulence, including turbulence characterization and its effects on correction (r₀, Cₙ² profiles, Greenwood and Tyler frequencies, and isoplanatic angle), and thermal blooming.
- Demonstrated use of a wave-optics propagation code for system performance prediction, including self-written codes, and ability to explain and defend the model's scope and limitations.
- Hands-on working knowledge of deformable mirrors, wavefront sensors, and high-bandwidth feedback control sufficient to specify them, review a vendor implementation, and assess delivered-system compliance.
- Ability to set and audit closed-loop control requirements, including bandwidth, latency, sampling, reconstructor approach, and disturbance rejection.
- Experience working directly with external vendors or partner organizations on custom optical and electro-optical systems, including specification negotiation and design reviews.
- Experience directing the technical work of other engineers, scientists, or technicians through a substantial task.
- Experience with high-energy or high-intensity laser systems and the resulting optical constraints, including damage threshold and thermal management.
- Advanced verbal and written communication skills, including technical documentation, requirements definition, and presentations to internal and external audiences.
- Willingness to travel to partner facilities and test sites.
- 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.
Responsibilities
- Own adaptive optics and wavefront control requirements for the Directed Energy program, from top-level irradiance and beam-quality objectives through component and interface specifications.
- Build and maintain the end-to-end performance model, including propagation through atmospheric turbulence and thermal blooming, wave-optics prediction of far-field irradiance, and a wavefront error budget resolved into fitting, temporal, measurement, calibration, and anisoplanatic terms.
- Set requirements for deformable mirrors, wavefront sensors, reconstructors, and the real-time control loop, including bandwidth, latency, and disturbance-rejection budgets; review vendor and partner designs against those requirements.
- Lead trade studies and architecture decisions covering correction topology, actuator count and stroke, sensing approach and wavelength, sampling and control rates, and whether system limits are due to physics or hardware.
- Ensure designs meet performance, reliability, and operability requirements, and identify technical risks and mitigation plans in coordination with program management.
- Translate lessons learned and key developments from Directed Energy beam control into beam-control goals and requirements for the fusion program, and advise the fusion adaptive-optics effort on architecture and component selection where technologies are shared.
- Serve as a primary technical interface to external program partners on adaptive optics and beam control; negotiate interfaces and requirements, participate in joint design reviews, and carry a substantive share of joint development work.
- Own the technical side of adaptive-optics procurements and development subcontracts, including statements of work, specification negotiation, vendor technical reviews, acceptance criteria, and testing.
- Plan and defend the resources required for the adaptive-optics scope, including scope, schedule, staffing, and build-versus-buy decisions, including when commercial systems suffice and when development is necessary.
- Serve as the primary technical interface for resolving performance, schedule, and integration issues with suppliers.
- Communicate complex beam-control trade-offs to audiences ranging from partner engineers to program leadership.
- Define proof-of-concept and risk-reduction experiments to resolve open questions, then direct optical engineers, laser scientists, and technicians in running the experiments and interpreting results.
- Define and review laboratory and in-situ test plans that validate performance and closed-loop operation, and approve the resulting test reports.
- Provide guidance and best practices to engineers assembling, integrating, and testing beam-control hardware in the beamline environment, including contamination-control discipline appropriate to deep-UV, high-fluence optics.
- Work with control-system engineers to integrate adaptive optics into the larger laser control system, helping define controls, interlocks, and operator feedback.
- Support commissioning and transition to reliable, repeatable operations, including field or range testing where required.
- Author and defend artifacts in the gated design-review process and review others' packages.
- Establish technical standards, documentation practices, and development workflows for the adaptive-optics group.
- Mentor engineers and scientists working on adaptive optics and wavefront control across the Directed Energy and fusion programs.
- Participate in hiring and onboarding as the group grows.
- Undertake technology development that continues beyond any single program.
Desired Qualifications
- Experience on directed-energy programs, including high-energy laser beam control, target tracking, or field-test campaigns.
- Experience delivering a custom adaptive-optics system from concept through commissioning.
- Familiarity with the pointing and tracking side of beam control, including gimbals, fast steering mirrors, jitter and line-of-sight stability budgets, and its handoff to wavefront correction.
- Experience with beacon and reference-wave strategies, including target-return and illuminator-based sensing.
- Familiarity with real-time software, field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based control, or low-latency computing architectures.
- Experience with predictive or optimal control, system identification, or reconstructor optimization applied to a real loop.
- Experience with adaptive optics or wavefront correction on large-aperture, high-energy pulsed beamlines.
- Experience with wavefront diagnostics beyond Shack-Hartmann sensing, including interferometry, phase retrieval, curvature sensing, or pyramid sensing.
- Experience with pulsed laser systems and diagnostics used to characterize them.
- Experience with high-energy optics in the deep ultraviolet, including laser-induced damage, coating specification, and contamination control.
- Experience with opto-mechanical jitter analysis, vibration isolation, and structural-thermal-optical performance (STOP) analysis.
- Prior experience on Department of Defense or other government-funded programs, including proposal and review cycles.
- Active or prior U.S. Department of Defense personnel security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one.
- Experience with intellectual-property development, including invention disclosures and patents.
- Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical teams, and building a technical discipline within an organization.
- Experience in multidisciplinary research laser facilities, such as national laboratories.
- Experience in laboratory, field, and operational environments that demand high reliability and uptime.
- Experience writing scientific papers or program technical reports.
About the company
Xcimer Energy develops inertial fusion energy technology aiming to generate fusion-powered electricity. Its system uses a 10+ megajoule KrF laser to ignite a hydrogen fusion target inside a HYLIFE-style liquid-wall chamber, which absorbs fusion energy and shields reactor walls for long life. The approach combines a high-energy laser, a consumable fusion target, and a liquid-wall chamber to pursue scalable, laser-driven inertial confinement fusion for power generation. The company’s goal is to make commercial fusion power a reality for utilities within the next decade.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Grant
Total Funding
$148.3M
Headquarters
Denver, Colorado
Founded
2021
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Xcimer raised $100 million in June 2024 and nearly $200 million total.
- The company expanded Denver in May 2026 and planned to double headcount.
- DOE funding, June 2026 approval, and RTX backing improve financing and recruiting access.
What critics are saying
- Vulcan site selection slipped past 2025; further delays push commercialization beyond 2035.
- Athena needs multi-megajoule lasers, tritium breeding, and grid integration before any revenue.
- Any Phoenix-to-Anvil performance miss would strand Xcimer’s capital-intensive laser platform.
What makes Xcimer Energy unique
- Xcimer’s June 2026 DOE-approved Athena roadmap validates its KrF inertial-fusion architecture.
- Phoenix started operations June 3, 2026, proving 1-kJ excimer amplification and 38-meter SBS compression.
- RTX partnered September 9, 2026, giving Xcimer defense-market validation beyond fusion alone.
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Benefits
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- Life Insurance
- Disability Insurance
- 401(k) Company Match
- Paid Vacation
- Paid Sick Leave
- Paid Holidays
- Company Equity