Electro-Optical Engineer (Adaptive Optics)

Location: Full-time onsite role based at the headquarters in Denver, Colorado, United States

Company

hirify.global develops inertial fusion energy systems using advanced laser architecture to support decarbonization and clean power generation.

What you will do

• Develop and optimize adaptive optics control-loop routines and validate performance against measured data.
• Design spatial beam-shaping algorithms using phase plates and adaptive optics.
• Align, calibrate, and operate deformable mirrors, wavefront sensors, and diagnostics on high-energy laser systems.
• Build repeatable auto-alignment methods and characterize aberrations, thermal drift, vibration, jitter, and turbulence.
• Develop and validate wave-optics propagation models, wavefront error budgets, and tolerance analyses.
• Collaborate with vendors and controls engineers to integrate adaptive optics into the broader laser control system and define procedures, interlocks, and operator feedback.

Requirements

• B.S. in optical science or engineering, physics, or a related field.
• At least 5 years of optical science or engineering experience, including at least 3 years working directly with adaptive optics systems.
• Experience with wavefront sensors, deformable mirrors, optimization and reconstruction methods, high-fidelity wave-optics propagation, and hands-on optical integration and alignment.
• Experience working across optical, opto-mechanical, software, and controls engineering disciplines.
• Working proficiency in at least one of MATLAB, Python, or C/C++/C# for modeling, analysis, and hardware control.
• Must be a U.S. citizen or national, current U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted refugee or asylee.

Nice to have

• M.S. or Ph.D. in optical engineering, optical science, physics, or a related field.
• Experience with turbulence characterization, wavefront reconstruction and control-law design, radiometry, imaging diagnostics, statistical analysis, or high-energy laser experiments.
• Experience with deep-UV high-energy optical systems, laser-induced damage, contamination control, beam pointing and jitter stabilization, or system-to-component requirements flowdown.
• Familiarity with real-time control, LabVIEW, embedded firmware, FPGA-based control, low-latency computing, opto-mechanical practice, cleanroom assembly, or STOP analysis.