Senior Payload Opto-Mechanical Systems Engineer

Schmidt Entities; Tucson (AZ); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Schmidt Entities in Tucson, AZ, seeks a Payload Opto-Mechanical Systems Engineer to lead design, analysis, integration and verification of spaceborne payloads, including a space telescope and multiple science instruments. You will translate scientific goals into detailed requirements and own the opto-mechanical development lifecycle.

The role blends technical leadership across disciplines with rigorous analysis, V&V, and collaboration with vendors, scientists, and partners to deliver a

Qualifications

• 5+ years in spaceborne or airborne telescope payloads.
• STOP analysis, optical performance budgets, and system error budgets.
• Hands-on AI&T including optical alignment and environmental testing.
• Experience with external vendors/subcontractors.

Responsibilities

• Lead opto-mechanical SME for the Space Division.
• Review vendor telescope and instrument designs and test plans.
• Develop tolerance budgets and alignment strategies.
• Maintain optical and error budgets.
• Lead STOP analysis activities and integrate models.
• Interface with telescope and instrument vendors.
• Participate in program reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, MRR, TRR, V&V).
• Support payload and spacecraft AI&T plans.

Skills

Opto-mechanical design

Systems engineering

Vendor management

Technical leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Mechanical engineering

Astrophysics payloads

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Mechanical/Aerospace/ Optical Engineering

Tools

SolidWorks

Nastran

Thermal Desktop

Sigfit

Zemax

Job description

About the Role

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Payload Opto-Mechanical Systems Engineer to lead the design, analysis, integration, and verification of advanced spaceborne payloads—including a space telescope and multiple science instruments. In this role, you will collaborate with world-class scientists—including Nobel Prize laureates—as well as engineers, and global partners to develop cutting‑edge space observatories that enable groundbreaking astrophysical discoveries.

You will be responsible for translating high-level science objectives into detailed telescope and instrument requirements, overseeing the opto‑mechanical development lifecycle, and ensuring that the delivered payload meets mission performance goals. This role blends deep opto‑mechanical engineering expertise with systems engineering ownership, giving you significant influence over the architecture, performance, and implementation of the telescope and its instruments.

As a key technical leader, you will drive payload‑level trade studies and architectures, lead STOP (Structural–Thermal–Optical Performance) analysis efforts, maintain and allocate optical performance and error budgets, and guide hardware development from concept through integration and test. You will serve as the primary technical interface to the telescope vendor and potentially multiple instrument vendors, ensuring their designs, analyses, and implementation meet mission requirements. Your expertise in requirements management, system budgets, vendor management, and V&V will be critical in ensuring mission success.

This position requires strong leadership, deep technical judgment, hands‑on engineering capability, and the ability to work seamlessly across multiple engineering disciplines to deliver a high‑performance spaceborne optical system.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the Opto‑Mechanical Subject Matter Expert for the Space Division.
• Guide vendors and review their implementation of telescope and instrument opto‑mechanical designs, including benches, mounts, flexures, baffles, metering structures, and precision mechanisms.
• Develop, maintain, and manage opto‑mechanical tolerance budgets and alignment strategies at the integrated payload level, and verify consistency throughout subsystem‑level implementations.
• Ensure opto‑mechanical designs meet alignment stability, stiffness, thermal distortion, contamination, and environmental requirements.
• Lead end‑to‑end STOP analysis activities, integrating structural, thermal, and optical models at the payload level.
• Maintain the optical performance budget and error budget, including WFE, LOS stability, jitter, thermally induced distortion, and alignment sensitivities.
• Derive hardware requirements, system budgets, and implementation strategies directly from STOP outputs and sensitivity analyses.
• Ensure STOP and performance results appropriately flow down to vendors and internal engineering teams.
• Contribute to system‑level trade studies evaluating performance, cost, risk, schedule, and compatibility with science objectives and an agile program structure.
• Support the Science and Engineering teams in developing end‑to‑end payload performance models, including sensitivity analyses, worst‑case conditions, and margin allocation.
• Maintain requirements traceability, verification methods, and performance allocations across telescope and instrument subsystems.
• Support interface development and ICD evolution between payload, spacecraft bus, and ground system teams.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for the telescope vendor and potentially science instrument vendors.
• Review vendor technical implementation, analyses, CAD models, drawings, test plans, and STOP outputs.
• Ensure vendor compliance with requirements, ICDs, interface budgets, error budgets, and performance allocations.
• Lead or participate in major program reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, MRR, TRR, V&V reviews).
• Support development of payload and spacecraft AI&T plans—including optical alignment procedures, metrology strategies, environmental testing, and contamination control processes.
• Contribute to V&V planning and execution, ensuring performance is verified under flight‑like conditions.
• Work closely with science leads, optical engineers, systems engineers, structural and thermal analysts, AI&T teams, and other subject‑matter experts across the mission.
• Communicate complex technical findings clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences, including stakeholders, leadership, and external partners.
• Proactively identify risks, gaps, or vendor issues and lead engineering teams toward solutions that maintain performance, schedule, and program agility.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Optical Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience developing spaceborne or airborne telescopes, instruments, or high‑stability optical payloads.
• Demonstrated expertise in opto‑mechanical design, including telescope and/or instrument design, optical alignment, and performance testing.
• Proven experience with STOP analysis, optical performance budgets, and system error budgets.
• Hands‑on experience with AI&T, including optical alignment, metrology, mechanical assembly, and environmental testing.
• Proficiency with CAD tools (preferably SolidWorks) and analysis tools (preferably Nastran, Thermal Desktop, Sigfit and Zemax).
• Experience managing external vendors or subcontractors on complex hardware development programs.
• Excellent cross‑functional collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with scientists, engineers, vendors, and external stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision and comfort navigating ambiguous, early‑stage program environments.
• 10+ years of relevant opto‑mechanical or space instrument experience.
• Experience working on astrophysics payloads, including telescopes, coronagraphs, integral field spectrographs, and/or spectrometers.
• Experience with Fast Steering Mirrors.
• Familiarity with contamination control, cryogenic optics, or advanced materials (SiC, ULE, Invar, CFRP).
• Hands‑on experience with interferometry, wavefront sensing, and precision optical metrology.

This is an exempt position.

This role requires access to U.S. export controlled information. Candidates must be a U.S. person (i.e. a citizen of the United States, a permanent resident, or a legal asylee or refugee) OR receive approval from the U.S. Government to work with U.S. export controlled information.