Optical Communications Architect (Free-Space Optical Communications)

Location: Redondo Beach, United States; onsite

Salary: $190,000–$240,000 per year, plus potential stock options and benefits.

Company

hirify.global Space develops in-space transportation vehicles for orbital transport, constellation deployment, precision reentry, and missions beyond Low Earth Orbit.

What you will do

• Own and maintain end-to-end optical communications link-budget models for free-space optical systems.
• Develop architecture models for space-to-ground and space-to-space laser communication links across relevant mission regimes.
• Quantify link margin, data rate, acquisition margin, and sensitivity to terminal design choices.
• Model optical transmitter and receiver performance from electrical input through propagation to detected signal.
• Lead architecture trades involving aperture size, transmit power, modulation, coding, pointing stability, atmospheric loss, and receiver sensitivity.
• Support pointing, acquisition, and tracking architecture by modeling sensitivity, pointing loss, and terminal requirements.

Requirements

• Degree or equivalent experience in optical engineering, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, applied mathematics, or a related technical field.
• 8+ years of experience building physics-based engineering models in Python, MATLAB, or a similar environment.
• Strong fundamentals in optics, communications, radiometry, statistics, or signal processing.
• Experience with optical communications, RF communications, telecom systems, high-speed electrical or optical hardware, or system-level communications architecture.
• Ability to work across disciplines and communicate assumptions, sensitivities, margins, and technical risks clearly.
• Applicants must be U.S. Persons or eligible to obtain a U.S. export license under ITAR/EAR requirements.

Nice to have

• Experience with free-space optical communications, lasercom, optical link budgets, or optical terminal architecture.
• Experience with terrestrial fiber, coherent optical communications, high-data-rate ground hardware, or telecom systems.
• Experience with coherent or direct-detection communications, receiver sensitivity analysis, atmospheric propagation, turbulence, cloud statistics, or optical site availability.
• Familiarity with EDFAs, modulators, fiber optics, photodetectors, coherent receivers, telescope systems, PAT, jitter, beam steering, or fiber coupling.
• Space hardware, spacecraft, or mission architecture experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment in the Avionics department.
• Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• Access to a 401(k) retirement plan.
• Potential long-term incentives in the form of stock options.

Hiring process

• Application and resume review.
• Introductory and technical phone interviews.
• Onsite interview followed by an offer.