Principal Electro-Optical/Adaptive Optics Engineer, Directed Energy

Xcimer Energy leverages decades of research on Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) combined with groundbreaking new laser architecture. Our mission is to deploy fusion power plants to meet global decarbonization goals as fast as possible. Xcimer has assembled a team of leaders in tough tech, fusion science, and manufacturing with a track record of rapid execution. Supported by leading investors, Xcimer is uniquely positioned to deliver limitless, clean, fusion power to combat climate change. Join us in powering a better world with inertial fusion!

This is a full-time, onsite role based at our headquarters in Denver, CO.

Xcimer’s Directed Energy programs apply the high-energy pulsed laser technology behind our fusion work to national security problems. We are seeking a Principal Electro-Optical/Adaptive Optics Engineer to serve as the adaptive optics and wavefront control authority for a directed-energy laser demonstrator. You will own the adaptive optics requirements, the performance budgets that justify them, and the plan and resources that implement them. You will be a primary technical interface for items such as: negotiating requirements and interfaces, reviewing partner designs and ours against the same performance model, and contributing to a shared development effort rather than handing off a specification.

Xcimer’s central goal is commercial fusion, and this role carries technology in both directions. Beam control lessons from the Directed Energy program feed directly into our fusion beamlines, where the same deep-UV wavefront and pointing problems reappear at a different scale and duty cycle. You will help set the beam control direction for fusion on the strength of what you deliver on Directed Energy.

Additionally, we are building the adaptive optics group. You will help set the technical standards and development practices it works to, mentor the engineers and scientists in it, and take on technology development that outlives any single program. We move on real hardware quickly. We want the governing equations and a first-order layout before money is committed, and we want a cheap experiment that could break the concept shortly after. We are looking for our scientists and engineers to apply their technical expertise, problem solving skills, and dedication to quality to positively impact the future of energy and national security!

Responsibilities:

Requirements and Performance Modeling

• Own adaptive optics and wavefront control requirements for the Directed Energy program, from the top-level irradiance and beam quality objectives down to component and interface specifications.
• Build and maintain the end-to-end performance model: propagation through atmospheric turbulence and thermal blooming, wave-optics prediction of far-field irradiance, and a wavefront error budget resolved into fitting, temporal, measurement, calibration, and anisoplanatic terms.
• Set the resulting requirements on deformable mirrors, wavefront sensors, reconstructors, and the real-time control loop, including bandwidth, latency, and disturbance rejection budgets, and review vendor and partner designs against them.
• Lead trade studies and architecture decisions: correction topology, actuator count and stroke, sensing approach and wavelength, sampling and control rates, and where the system is limited by physics rather than by hardware.
• Ensure designs meet performance, reliability, and operability requirements, and identify technical risks with mitigation plans in coordination with program management.
• Translate lessons learned and key developments from Directed Energy beam control into beam control goals and requirements for Xcimer’s fusion program, and advise the fusion adaptive optics effort on architecture and component selection where the two programs share technology.

Vendor and Partner Engagement

• Act as a primary technical interface to our external program partners on adaptive optics and beam control. Negotiate interfaces and requirements, participate in joint design reviews, and carry a substantive share of a joint development effort.
• Own the technical side of adaptive optics procurements and development subcontracts: statements of work, specification negotiation, vendor technical reviews, and acceptance criteria and testing.
• Plan and defend the resources the adaptive optics scope needs: scope, schedule, staffing, and build-versus-buy calls, including where a commercial system suffices and where development is unavoidable.
• Act as the primary technical interface for resolving performance, schedule, and integration issues with suppliers.
• Communicate complex beam control trades clearly to audiences ranging from partner engineers to program leadership.

Integration, Test, and Commissioning

• Define the proof-of-concept and risk-reduction experiments that settle open questions, then direct optical engineers, laser scientists, and technicians to run them and interpret the results.
• Define and review laboratory and in-situ test plans that validate performance and closed-loop operation, and approve the resulting test reports.
• Provide guidance and best practices to other engineers in the assembly, integration, and test of beam control hardware within the beamline environment, including contamination-control discipline appropriate to deep-UV, high-fluence optics.
• Work with control system engineers to integrate adaptive optics within the larger laser control system, helping define required controls, interlocks, and operator feedback.
• Support commissioning activities and the transition to reliable, repeatable operations, including field or range testing where required.

Technical Stewardship and Group Growth

• Author and defend artifacts in Xcimer’s gated design review process, and serve as a reviewer on others’ packages.
• Establish technical standards, documentation practices, and development workflows for the adaptive optics group.
• Mentor engineers and scientists working on adaptive optics and wavefront control, across both the Directed Energy and fusion programs.
• Participate in hiring and onboarding as the group grows.
• Take on technology development that outlives any single program.

Requirements:

• Education:Advanced degree in optics, physics, electrical engineering, or a closely related field.
• Experience: 8+ years of optical science/engineering experience, including 5+ years in adaptive optics, wavefront sensing and control, directed energy, or closely related high-speed optical/laser control systems.
• A track record of delivering adaptive optics or beam control systems in industry, national labs, or observatories.
• Demonstrated ownership of adaptive optics requirements and performance budgets on a real program, including the wavefront error budget and its allocation across subsystems.
• Laser beam propagation through atmospheric turbulence, including turbulence characterization and its consequences for correction (r₀, Cₙ² profiles, Greenwood and Tyler frequencies, isoplanatic angle), and thermal blooming.
• Demonstrated use of a wave-optics propagation code for system performance prediction, including codes you wrote yourself, and the ability to state and defend what the model does and does not capture.
• Hands-on working knowledge of deformable mirrors, wavefront sensors, and high-bandwidth feedback control, sufficient to specify them, review a vendor’s implementation, and judge whether a delivered system meets its requirements.
• Ability to set and audit closed-loop control requirements: bandwidth, latency, sampling, reconstructor approach, and disturbance rejection.
• Experience working directly with external vendors or partner organizations on custom optical and electro-optical systems, including specification negotiation and design reviews.
• Experience directing the technical work of other engineers, scientists, or technicians through a substantial task.
• Experience with high-energy or high-intensity laser systems and the constraints they place on optics, including damage threshold and thermal management.
• Advanced verbal and written communication skills, including technical documentation, requirements definition, and presentation to internal and external audiences.
• Willingness to travel to partner facilities and test sites.
• Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Desired:

• Experience on directed energy programs, including high-energy laser beam control, target tracking, or field test campaigns.
• Experience delivering a custom adaptive optics system from concept through commissioning.
• Familiarity with the pointing and tracking side of beam control (gimbals, fast steering mirrors, jitter and line-of-sight stability budgets) and how it hands off to wavefront correction.
• Experience with beacon and reference-wave strategies, including target-return and illuminator-based sensing.
• Familiarity with real-time software, FPGA-based control, or low-latency computing architectures.
• Experience with predictive or optimal control, system identification, or reconstructor optimization applied to a real loop.
• Experience with adaptive optics or wavefront correction on large-aperture, high-energy pulsed beamlines.
• Experience with wavefront diagnostics beyond Shack-Hartmann sensing (interferometry, phase retrieval, curvature or pyramid sensing).
• Experience with pulsed laser systems and the diagnostics used to characterize them.
• Experience with high-energy optics in the deep UV, including laser-induced damage, coating specification, and contamination control.
• Experience with opto-mechanical jitter analysis, vibration isolation, and STOP (structural-thermal-optical performance) analysis.
• Prior experience on DoD or other government-funded programs, including proposal and review cycles.
• Active or prior U.S. DoD personnel security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one.
• Experience with intellectual property development, including invention disclosures and patents.
• Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical teams, and building out a technical discipline within an organization.
• Experience in multidisciplinary research laser facilities, such as national laboratories.
• Experience in laboratory, field, and operational environments that demand high reliability and uptime.
• Experience writing scientific papers or program technical reports.