Senior Optomechanical Engineer

9 Mothers Corporation; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

9 Mothers Corporation in Austin, TX is seeking a Senior Optomechanical Engineer to own the optics-related subsystems on our robotic platform. You will ensure alignment, environmental robustness, and real-time performance of cameras, imagers, rangefinders, and sensor heads used in field deployments.

This hands-on role involves mounting, aligning, testing under thermal and vibrational loads, and working closely with optical designers to translate prescriptions into buildable assemblies.

Responsibilities

• Own the optical subsystems. Be the responsible engineer for every sensor head, camera module, and optical window on the platform, from concept and requirements through production and field support. Own the optomechanical error budget and the drawings, ICDs, and test procedures that go with it.
• Mount optics properly. Design kinematic, semi-kinematic, flexure, bonded, and retained mounts for lenses, windows, mirrors, filters, and focal plane assemblies. Control preload, bond line thickness, and stress birefringence. Make mounts that can be aligned once and stay aligned.
• Choose materials on purpose. Select housing, cell, spacer, and fastener materials to balance CTE match, stiffness, mass, machinability, corrosion, and cost. Run the athermalization math for focus and boresight, and make the cost‑versus‑stability call with numbers behind it.
• Manage shock and vibration. Design for weapon recoil, gunfire shock, and gimbal slew loads. Drive structural modes away from excitation, specify or design isolation where it helps, and keep line‑of‑sight jitter and boresight shift within budget. Run modal and structural FEA and correlate it to test.
• Keep it clean and dry. Design sealed, purged, and desiccated housings that keep moisture, dust, and contaminants off the glass for years in the field. Specify seals, breathers, purge and fill procedures, window coatings, and anti‑fog and window‑clearing approaches. Set up the clean assembly practices and handling procedures our technicians will follow.
• Align and boresight. Develop alignment and co‑boresighting methods and fixtures for multiple sensors on a common mount and to the weapon. Make alignment repeatable on a production floor, not just on your bench.
• Work with the optical designers. Turn lens prescriptions into buildable assemblies. Feed tolerance sensitivities and mechanical constraints back early. Support integrated structural‑thermal‑optical (STOP) analysis where it earns its keep.
• Test and prove it. Plan and run thermal cycling, vibration, shock, humidity, and water‑ingress testing on optical assemblies. Measure what moved, in focus, boresight, and image quality, and close the loop into the next revision.
• Make it manufacturable. Work with our machine shop

Job description

Location: Onsite — Austin, TX
Employment Type: Direct Hire, Full-Time
Job Title: Senior Optomechanical Engineer

About 9 Mothers

The modern battlefield has changed. Cheap, autonomous suicide drones have turned the tactical advantage upside down, and the world is looking for a solution. At 9 Mothers, we aren’t just "innovating"—we are building the shield.
Backed by top-tier investors, we develop AI powered machines designed to intercept and neutralize Group 1/sUAS threats in real-time. Our flagship product is a low-power, counter-drone system built for the edge—on vehicles, at bases, or in a soldier's pack.

Why 9 Mothers?

While others build for "awareness" or "long-term research," we build for the immediate survival of those in harm’s way. We are a team of hackers, engineers, and mission-driven builders who value field-ready capability over polished slide decks. If you want to see your code or hardware in the field next month—not next year—this is your playground.

Position Summary

• We are hiring a Senior Optomechanical Engineer to own the optics-related subsystems on our robotic weapon platforms: the cameras, thermal imagers, rangefinders, and sensor heads that let our systems find and engage small drones, and the windows, housings, and mounts that keep them working. This role exists because our optics have to hold alignment and image quality on a machine that fires shotguns, slews hard, and lives outdoors in Texas heat, dust, and rain.
• This is not an optical design role. Our lens trains are designed by others, inside and outside the company. Your job is everything that happens to those optics once they leave the designer: how they are held, aligned, sealed, kept clean and dry, protected from shock and vibration, and made to perform the same at 0 °F as they do at 140 °F. You are the person who makes sure we get every bit of performance the optical designer put on paper, and you are the person who tells the designer early when a prescription will not survive the mount it needs.
• The person we want thinks in degrees of freedom. You know where an optic is constrained and where it is free to move, how much it will move with temperature and load, and what that does to focus, boresight, and MTF. You have strong opinions on bonded versus clamped versus flexure mounts, and the experience to back them. You know what Invar, titanium, and stainless buy you over aluminum, and you know when aluminum is the right answer because the error budget allows it and the price does not.
• This is a hands‑on role. You will build and align your own assemblies, put them on the shaker and in the thermal chamber, take them to the range, and measure what moved.

Essential Duties

• Own the optical subsystems. Be the responsible engineer for every sensor head, camera module, and optical window on the platform, from concept and requirements through production and field support. Own the optomechanical error budget and the drawings, ICDs, and test procedures that go with it.
• Mount optics properly. Design kinematic, semi-kinematic, flexure, bonded, and retained mounts for lenses, windows, mirrors, filters, and focal plane assemblies. Control preload, bond line thickness, and stress birefringence. Make mounts that can be aligned once and stay aligned.
• Choose materials on purpose. Select housing, cell, spacer, and fastener materials to balance CTE match, stiffness, mass, machinability, corrosion, and cost. Run the athermalization math for focus and boresight, and make the cost‑versus‑stability call with numbers behind it.
• Manage shock and vibration. Design for weapon recoil, gunfire shock, and gimbal slew loads. Drive structural modes away from excitation, specify or design isolation where it helps, and keep line‑of‑sight jitter and boresight shift within budget. Run modal and structural FEA and correlate it to test.
• Keep it clean and dry. Design sealed, purged, and desiccated housings that keep moisture, dust, and contaminants off the glass for years in the field. Specify seals, breathers, purge and fill procedures, window coatings, and anti‑fog and window‑clearing approaches. Set up the clean assembly practices and handling procedures our technicians will follow.
• Align and boresight. Develop alignment and co‑boresighting methods and fixtures for multiple sensors on a common mount and to the weapon. Make alignment repeatable on a production floor, not just on your bench.
• Work with the optical designers. Turn lens prescriptions into buildable assemblies. Feed tolerance sensitivities and mechanical constraints back early. Support integrated structural‑thermal‑optical (STOP) analysis where it earns its keep.
• Test and prove it. Plan and run thermal cycling, vibration, shock, humidity, and water‑ingress testing on optical assemblies. Measure what moved, in focus, boresight, and image quality, and close the loop into the next revision.
• Make it manufacturable. Work with our machine shop