Jobs and Careers

Senior Payload Opto-Mechanical Systems Engineer

United Statesfull_timeVerifiedPosted 7 Jul 2026

About the role

About the Role

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Payload Opto-Mechanical Systems Engineer to lead the design, analysis, integration, and verification of advanced spaceborne payloads—including a space telescope and multiple science instruments. In this role, you will collaborate with world-class scientists—including Nobel Prize laureates—as well as engineers, and global partners to develop cutting-edge space observatories that enable groundbreaking astrophysical discoveries.

You will be responsible for translating high-level science objectives into detailed telescope and instrument requirements, overseeing the opto-mechanical development lifecycle, and ensuring that the delivered payload meets mission performance goals. This role blends deep opto-mechanical engineering expertise with systems engineering ownership, giving you significant influence over the architecture, performance, and implementation of the telescope and its instruments.

As a key technical leader, you will drive payload-level trade studies and architectures, lead STOP (Structural–Thermal–Optical Performance) analysis efforts, maintain and allocate optical performance and error budgets, and guide hardware development from concept through integration and test. You will serve as the primary technical interface to the telescope vendor and potentially multiple instrument vendors, ensuring their designs, analyses, and implementation meet mission requirements. Your expertise in requirements management, system budgets, vendor management, and V&V will be critical in ensuring mission success.

This position requires strong leadership, deep technical judgment, hands-on engineering capability, and the ability to work seamlessly across multiple engineering disciplines to deliver a high-performance spaceborne optical system.

Key Responsibilities for this role include the following:

Opto-Mechanical Design & Requirements Development

Serve as the Opto-Mechanical Subject Matter Expert for the Space Division.
Guide vendors and review their implementation of telescope and instrument opto-mechanical designs, including benches, mounts, flexures, baffles, metering structures, and precision mechanisms.
Develop, maintain, and manage opto-mechanical tolerance budgets and alignment strategies at the integrated payload level, and verify consistency throughout subsystem-level implementations.
Ensure opto-mechanical designs meet alignment stability, stiffness, thermal distortion, contamination, and environmental requirements.

STOP Analysis & Optical Performance / Error Budgeting

Lead end-to-end STOP analysis activities, integrating structural, thermal, and optical models at the payload level.
Maintain the optical performance budget and error budget, including WFE, LOS stability, jitter, thermally induced distortion, and alignment sensitivities.
Derive hardware requirements, system budgets, and implementation strategies directly from STOP outputs and sensitivity analyses.
Ensure STOP and performance results appropriately flow down to vendors and internal engineering teams.

Payload Systems Engineering

Contribute to system-level trade studies evaluating performance, cost, risk, schedule, and compatibility with science objectives and an agile program structure.
Support the Science and Engineering teams in developing end-to-end payload performance models, including sensitivity analyses, worst-case conditions, and margin allocation.
Maintain requirements traceability, verification methods, and performance allocations across telescope and instrument subsystems.
Support interface development and ICD evolution between payload, spacecraft bus, and ground system teams.

Vendor Technical Leadership

Serve as the primary technical point of contact for the telescope vendor and potentially science instrument vendors.
Review vendor technical implementation, analyses, CAD models, drawings, test plans, and STOP outputs.
Ensure vendor compliance with requirements, ICDs, interface budgets, error budgets, and performance allocations.
Lead or participate in major program reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, MRR, TRR, V&V reviews).

Assembly, Integration & Test (AI&T)

Support development of payload and spacecraft AI&T plans—including optical alignment procedures, metrology strategies, environmental testing, and contamination control processes.
Contribute to V&V planning and execution, ensuring performance is verified und