Senior Optomechanical Pointing & Tracking Engineer

PLP Group; Phoenix (AZ); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health and dental insurance

401(k)

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Azora is building high-bandwidth optical terminals for diverse space and ground applications. We seek an experienced engineer to own productization of compact PAT optical subsystems and guide pointing systems from prototype to field qualification.

You will design beam steering assemblies, perform STOP analyses, and develop pointing budgets while coordinating with software and electrical teams for autonomous optical communications across space assets.

Qualifications

• BSc or MS in Mechanical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
• 3+ years of optomechanical design experience for precision optical systems.

Responsibilities

• Design optomechanical assemblies for beam steering: gimbals, FSMs, telescope mounts, relay optics, and fiber-coupling stages.
• Perform structural, thermal, and STOP analysis to verify line-of-sight stability and wavefront error budgets.
• Develop pointing error budgets covering base motion, jitter, thermal drift, and control-loop residuals, and flow them down to component requirements.
• Design, select and qualify actuators, encoders, bearings, and flexures for ground and space environments.
• Lead alignment, integration, and test of optical assemblies in the field.
• Support acquisition and tracking field campaigns at ground station sites, including troubleshooting under real atmospheric conditions.
• Work closely with software, electrical and network engineers to close the loop between lab-based mechanical design and to autonomous optical communications with space assets.

Skills

Optomechanical design

CAD

FEA

Alignment & testing

GD&T

Thermal-structural analysis

Field deployment

Education

BSc or MS in Mechanical Engineering / Optical Engineering / Aerospace Engineering

Tools

Zemax/OpticStudio

CODE V

ANSYS/Nastran

Job description

Azora is building high-bandwidth optical terminals for diverse space and ground applications. We seek an experienced engineer to own productization of compact PAT optical subsystems and guide pointing systems from prototype to field qualification.

You will design beam steering assemblies, perform STOP analyses, and develop pointing budgets while coordinating with software and electrical teams for autonomous optical communications across space assets.