Senior Free-Space Optics Engineer for Space Photonics

Telemetry Today LLC; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Comprehensive benefits

Paid time off

Job summary

K2 Space seeks a Senior Photonics Engineer focused on free-space optics to define atmospheric measurement and optical hardware design strategies. You will lead experiments from tabletop emulators to field tests, shaping requirements for PICs and payload teams, and collaborating with cross-disciplinary teams across K2 Space’s programs.

In this role you will own atmospheric channel modeling, develop rigorous data pipelines, and mentor a team of engineers and technicians in a fast-paced,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in optics, physics, electrical engineering, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of hands-on free-space optics experience in free-space optical communications, adaptive optics, or atmospheric propagation (a relevant PhD counts toward this).
• Led free-space optical experiments end to end: designing and aligning benches, taking data, and correlating it with models.
• Working knowledge of optical turbulence and propagation theory (Cn², Fried parameter, Rytov variance), with Python for modeling and analysis.

Responsibilities

• Design tabletop experiments that emulate optical propagation through turbulent media, using spatial light modulators, phase plates, and phase-screen generation; validate them against target statistics.
• Put receivers in the loop (free-space optics, fiber and photonic-chip front ends, and their control electronics) and measure coupling efficiency, fading, bit error rate, and control-loop bandwidth.
• Characterize wavefront sensing and correction hardware (Shack-Hartmann sensors, deformable mirrors, SLMs) alongside photonic-integrated alternatives.
• Take experiments out of the lab: outdoor horizontal-path links on rooftops and test ranges, then night campaigns at mountaintop optical ground stations and observatories, including site coordination, laser-safety approvals, equipment transport, night operations, and data reduction.
• Own K2's optical propagation and channel models long-term: build them in Python, calibrate them continuously against lab and field data, quantify their uncertainty, and turn the results into requirements.
• Define the experiment roadmap: decide which measurements most reduce model uncertainty, and set the lab-to-field test plan.
• Automate experiments on the team's shared test framework so lab and field data share one pipeline.
• Mentor engineers and technicians supporting the experiments.

Skills

Free-space optics

Python modeling

Experiment design

Atmospheric propagation

Team mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in optics/physics/EE

Tools

Phase screens

Spatial light modulators

Zemax

AOTools

Job description

K2 Space seeks a Senior Photonics Engineer focused on free-space optics to define atmospheric measurement and optical hardware design strategies. You will lead experiments from tabletop emulators to field tests, shaping requirements for PICs and payload teams, and collaborating with cross-disciplinary teams across K2 Space’s programs.

In this role you will own atmospheric channel modeling, develop rigorous data pipelines, and mentor a team of engineers and technicians in a fast-paced,