Optical Engineer

About Skyloom

Skyloom, an IonQ company, is a telecommunications company founded with the mission to develop, deploy, and operate one of the fundamental pieces of tomorrow's space communication infrastructure to provide data transport services on a planetary scale. If you have a strong sense of purpose, focus, urgency, and willingness to compete, or if working on space lasers excites you, join our team to develop the future generation of space communication technology.

Skyloom is building the orbital infrastructure for the next renaissance in global connectivity. As Earth’s first space-based telecommunications company, we deliver fiberless, planetary-scale data transport that dramatically increases bandwidth, availability, and resiliency—while reducing latency and total cost of operations.

Our proprietary optical technology enables secure, ultra-high-capacity connections across our end-to-end, multi-orbit network or within your own infrastructure, unlocking a new standard for global communications.

Location: This role will be onsite in our Broomfield, Colorado office.

Travel: Up to 5%

Job ID: 1706

The Role

The Optical Designer and Analyst will be responsible for designing, analyzing, and optimizing optical systems for space-based communication technologies. This role requires hands-on experience with optical design software, a strong background in optics, and the ability to collaborate across disciplines to deliver optical designs that are both innovative and capable of cost-effective mass production.

Responsibilities

• Lead the full lifecycle of optical systems, including conceptualization, simulation, detailed design, and prototyping. Focus areas include free-space optical communication systems and high-speed laser applications.
• Conduct in-depth analysis using optical design software to optimize system performance, focusing on aspects such as manufacturing and alignment tolerances, wavefront error, radiometric analysis, free-space far-field propagation and fiber coupling efficiency.
• Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, software and control engineering teams to ensure seamless integration of optical subsystems into spacecraft or ground-based platforms.
• Develop and implement optomechanical design and analysis strategies to validate design requirements, including Structural-Thermal-Optical Performance analysis to ensure robustness for space environments.
• Write and maintain technical documentation on designs, analyses, and test procedures. Mentor and transfer knowledge to other team members and cross-functional peers.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Optics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field.
• Proven experience in optical system design, particularly for space-based or high-precision optical instruments.
• Extensive experience with optical design software (e.g., ZEMAX) and mechanical design tools (e.g., SolidWorks, Siemens NX).
• To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Skyloom employees must be a U.S. citizen, lawful U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State and/or the U.S. Department of Commerce, as applicable. Learn more about ITAR here.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with optical design in the context of space-flight systems or astronomy is highly desirable.
• Experience working in a cleanroom environment (ISO 5 to ISO 8).
• Spanish speaking is a plus.

Compensation

The approximate base salary range for this position is $116,736 - $152,250. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.

Benefits will be provided by Skyloom, Inc., an IonQ Company, and will differ from the benefits listed on the IonQ website.