Senior Optomechanical Engineer — Field-Ready Optics

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

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.