Laser Engineer (Pulsed Solid-State).

About the Team

The Seeker Team builds the eyes and the targeting logic of our weapon system: a low-cost, mass-producible, multimodal missile seeker that leans on commercial supply chains where they outperform, and vertically integrates wherever possible. On a modern missile, the seeker is 40 to 60% of unit cost and often drives overly long delivery cycles; accordingly, the seeker team is at the tip of the spear for delivering capability to our customers and value to the taxpayer.

Seeker design has exactly two real constraints: physics and mission. Nothing else is a show-stopper, only an obstacle to overcome. We are a small, deeply technical team that drives capability through ingenuity and bias for action and ships hardware that flies. This is a wear-many-hats environment where you must be comfortable "building the airplane in flight" and stepping well outside your comfort zone; a narrowly scoped role with clean handoffs is not what this team offers.

This is an AI-native team. Through fluent use of cutting-edge agentic coding tools, one engineer here consistently out-delivers a much larger conventional team. You will have opinions about where these tools help and where they do not, provide governance input, and build out an AI-centric workflow from day one.

About the Role

You own every pulsed laser transmitter the seeker flies, bought or built. Near term, that means buying intelligently: surveying the global supply base for Q-switched Er:glass and seeded MOPA transmitters, characterizing what actually arrives, and integrating it behind a swap-ready interface. Then it means building our own: Q-switched Er:glass lasers designed, assembled, and tested in-house, and seeded MOPA amplifier chains built around off-the-shelf seed lasers. The coherent systems engineer owns the channel and the link budget and is your customer for delivered pulse performance; everything inside the transmitter (gain, Q-switch, cavity, amplifier, pump, thermal, lifetime) is yours, from first bench device through rate production. You are also the program's laser safety authority. 

What You'll Do

• Own the laser transmitter specification and ICD with the coherent systems engineer: pulse energy, width, repetition rate, jitter, divergence and M², SWaP, and environment, derived from the channel link budgets, defended with your own models. 

• Near term (buy): survey and downselect off-the-shelf Er:glass microchip modules, seeded MOPA transmitters, and seed lasers from the global supply base, where expediency and cost lead; own the vendor technical relationships. 

• Near term (prove): characterize every bought unit at device level (energy over temperature, repetition-rate derating, beam quality, pulse jitter, shot life, lot-to-lot variance) and write the acceptance test no datasheet passes on its own. 

• Near term (integrate): trigger and synchronization, the drive-electronics interface (with Electronics & Power), thermal path, and the swap-ready optical/mechanical/electrical interface, so the production source can change without redesigning the seeker. 

• In-house build: design and build the Q-switched Er:glass laser, covering Er/Yb glass selection, pump-diode and thermal design, passive (Co:spinel) or active Q-switching, cavity and output coupler, fluence versus laser-damage budget, and run it from first light to a qualified, producible unit. 

• In-house build: design and build the seeded MOPA amplifier chain around the off-the-shelf seed, covering gain staging and energy extraction, ASE and parasitic-lasing control, SBS/SRS headroom, isolation, and pulsed pumping. 

• Package both laser families for the flight environment (shock, vibration, temperature) and own lifetime, burn-in, and acceptance testing into rate production with Manufacturing and Test Systems. 

• Own the pulsed-laser lab and its craft: alignment and bonding fixtures, metrology, and the build procedures technicians will run at rate. 

• Own laser safety program-wide: classification, NOHD analysis, range paperwork, and the ANSI Z136.1 program, as Laser Safety Officer. 

Skills We're Hiring For

• • B.S. in Optics, Photonics, Physics, or Electrical Engineering; M.S. or Ph.D. preferred. 

  • 7+ years designing and building pulsed solid-state lasers that shipped or flew: diode-pumped, Q-switched systems you personally took from model to bench hardware to measured performance. 

  • Resonator and Q-switch design from first principles: rate equations, cavity stability and mode control, passive and active Q-switching, output-coupler and fluence trades against coating and material damage thresholds. 

  • Diode pumping done for real: pump wavelength control over temperature, thermal lensing and fracture limits (glass gain media especially), diode lifetime and derating, and the drive electronics they demand. 

  • Amplifier design: seeded MOPA chains in fiber and/or bulk, covering stored-energy extraction, ASE and parasitic-lasing suppression, SBS/SRS management, linewidth control, and isolation. 

  • Laser modeling fluency (e.g., LASCAD, ASLD, RP Fiber Power, Zemax, plus your own Python rate-equation models) with a track record of models matching measured hardware. 

  • Bench characterization craft: pulse energy and temporal shape, M² and divergence, spectrum and linewidth, jitter, over temperature and life, with data you would defend in a design review. 

  • Packaging pulsed lasers for harsh environments: bonded and aligned assemblies that hold spec through shock, vibration, and temperature. 

  • Laser safety as an owner, not a user: ANSI Z136.1, classification and NOHD analysis, range operations; prior Laser Safety Officer duty or the depth to take it on. 

  • Daily use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code or similar) to multiply your output, with examples of what you've shipped. 

Bonus Points For

• Er:glass / eye-safe 1.5 µm lasers in a rangefinder, designator, or ladar product. 

• Microchip laser design or manufacture, including bonded passive-Q-switch assemblies. 

• High-g or munition-class laser packaging; direct missile or seeker program experience. 

• Taking a laser from prototype to volume production: yield, burn-in, and acceptance at rate. 

• Working knowledge of the gain-media, Q-switch crystal, coating, and pump-diode supply base.