Lead Optical Engineer: Stray Light & Imaging

L3Harris Technologies; City of Rochester (NY); On-site; USD 117,000 - 218,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) match

Flexible spending accounts

EAP

Education assistance

Parental leave

Paid time off

Company-paid holidays

Job summary

L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, NY seeks a Lead Optical Engineer focused on stray light analysis to advance aerospace imaging systems. You will lead design, modeling, and verification across multidisciplinary teams.

The ideal candidate has deep optical system knowledge, experience with non-sequential stray light, and is comfortable guiding complex technical work with internal teams, suppliers, and customers.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent with 9+ years of related experience.
• 2-3 years of stray light analysis experience using tools such as FRED.
• Ability to obtain a federal security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Lead or support optical engineering activities for advanced imaging, sensing, and EO systems.
• Develop non-sequential stray light and radiometric models for active and passive imaging systems.
• Support system performance analysis and verification of wavefront error, line of sight, distortion, focus, and image quality.
• Perform end-to-end optical analyses linking design features to mission-level image quality and SNR, communicating risks and mitigations.
• Contribute to assessment of optical system behavior including ghosting, scattering, and stray light performance for design verification.
• Support design trades for baffles, stops, surface treatments, contamination control, and alignment strategies to preserve performance.

Skills

Optical engineering

Stray light analysis

FRED

Education

Bachelor’s Degree

Graduate Degree

Tools

FRED

Zygo Mx

QED.NET

CodeV

Zemax OpticStudio

Job description

L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, NY seeks a Lead Optical Engineer focused on stray light analysis to advance aerospace imaging systems. You will lead design, modeling, and verification across multidisciplinary teams.

The ideal candidate has deep optical system knowledge, experience with non-sequential stray light, and is comfortable guiding complex technical work with internal teams, suppliers, and customers.