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OPTICAL DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER / LEAD

Attractive SW location, and early-stage company 6 figure compensation package, including equity.

Engaged Search June 2024

About our Client:

Our client is an established early-stage startup working to disruptively add value in the biomedical optics field. Our client is looking to develop innovative biomedical hardware to provide healthcare information for individuals through innovative optical sensing. Our client strives to provide individuals with better, higher resolution information about their bodies and as a result of their health-care choices. Our client’s team driven environment requires innovative, creative thinkers, problem solvers, and doers, not afraid to deal with ambiguity, and problems requiring breakthrough solutions. Our client values great communicators, highly curious, and independent thinkers, who take initiative and are goal oriented. This R&D role is an on-site role. Our client has developed benchtop demonstration / proof of concept of their sensing technology and now is moving this benchtop to a more refined design which will result in a producible form factor in subsequent development stages.

About the Optical Engineer our client is seeking:

• You will be responsible for building, testing and validating prototypes of their sensor hardware, including small form factor optical / photonic components and assemblies. You will have and be the Directly Responsible Individual and have ownership of the optical subsystems.
• You will provide support and leadership to the specification and design of components including: characterization/design validation, subcomponent integration into higher assemblies, and or systems, and eventually the manufacturing / fabrication of the components into assemblies, subsystems, and systems.
• You will design, execute, test, and analyze experiments in the development and optimization of micro-scale optical components in the IR spectrum.
• As the lead Optical Engineer, you will be deeply involved in new product development, and advancing existing product, technology under test.

Key Technical Qualifications for Success:

• You possess a bachelor’s degree at a minimum, or an advanced degree (preferred) in Optical Engineering, Physics, or a related field and 4-10+ years experience in an industry role (preferred) or a postdoctoral role.

• Proven experience in assembling, characterizing, and validating micro-scale optical components, with a strong preference for expertise in the Infrared spectrum

• You have an affinity, a passion for working in the lab, of experimental optics, engineering, and hands-on work with a variety of different optical instruments, tools, for test, measurement, alignment.
• You enjoy being multidisciplinary, having strong quantitative, analytical skills and being able to work with software tools, Tidy3D, LabVIEW, MATLAB, Zemax, and you might have some electronics knowledge, and or optomechanical abilities.
• You have experience developing products and bringing them through the development cycle, and designing for manufacturing, DFM.

Key Personal Attributes / Style:

• You are a “Builder”, who likes to move fast and solve problems.

• Predisposition for elegant, simple designs and high-quality standards. Comfortable balancing these deftly against shipping scrappy development work with a Build, Test, Iterate ethos. You recognize that our client is an early-stage company that can take substantial risks but that needs to move fast with high-quality results.
• You see the bigger picture and prioritize to ensure the project doesn’t get bogged down in small details.
• Often you actively propose solutions rather than just identifying problems to keep projects moving, unblocking the team so they can do their best work.
• As an experienced engineer you are skilled at aligning people, assuming best intent, collaborating, and shipping work with velocity.
• As an experienced confident engineer, you are self-directed and independent but an excellent team player.
• You possess a strong internal desire to assume responsibility over projects and accountability for outcomes.
• You are not afraid to operate with conviction without complete clarity. You take decisive actions in difficult, ambiguous situations, and validate assumptions “scrappily” and iteratively.
• You are a diligent communicator, with the ability to convey complex technical information clearly and persuasively. Comfortable writing short memos, consistently documenting and sharing your work, recording voiceover audio/video to express ideas, etc.