Senior Optical Communications Design Engineer — Space Laser

Blue Origin; Merritt Island (FL); On-site; USD 182,000 - 277,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Stock options

Paid time off

Job summary

Blue Origin seeks a Senior Optical Communications Design Engineer to own and evolve an existing space-based optical link design. You will lead a multidisciplinary team to advance pointing, acquisition, and tracking algorithms, hardware integration, and system-level validation for a constellation that provides high-bandwidth global connectivity.

You will guide end-to-end design, perform link budgets, and drive cost-reductions while ensuring robust performance under jitter and challenging space

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Optical/Electrical Engineering or Physics is required.
• 5+ years in design and development of optical communication systems.
• Experience leading small technical teams with hardware and software specialists.
• Proven experience with satellite optics or aerospace applications.
• Strong PAT and optical link budget skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, analysis, and optimization of free-space optical comms with PAT.
• Direct cross-functional teams to implement optical algorithms and hardware.
• Design end-to-end optical comms pipeline from data interface to front-end.
• Oversee selection and testing of lasers, modulators, detectors, and pointing mechanisms.
• Perform link budget modeling and simulations under various conditions.
• Develop test infra and validate component and system level performance.
• Collaborate with systems, avionics, and software teams for integration.
• Create design docs, interface definitions, and performance analyses.

Skills

Team leadership

PAT systems knowledge

Optical link budget

System engineering coordination

Education

BS in Optical/Electrical Engineering or Physics

MS or PhD preferred

Tools

Zemax

Code V

MATLAB/Simulink

DSP on FPGA/GPU

Job description

Blue Origin seeks a Senior Optical Communications Design Engineer to own and evolve an existing space-based optical link design. You will lead a multidisciplinary team to advance pointing, acquisition, and tracking algorithms, hardware integration, and system-level validation for a constellation that provides high-bandwidth global connectivity.

You will guide end-to-end design, perform link budgets, and drive cost-reductions while ensuring robust performance under jitter and challenging space