Sr. Optical Engineer

Build a career powered by innovations that matter!  At Novanta, our innovations power technology products that are transforming healthcare and advanced manufacturing—improving productivity, enhancing people’s lives and redefining what’s possible.  We create for our global customers engineered components and sub-systems that deliver extreme precision and performance for a range of mission-critical applications—from minimally invasive surgery to robotics to 3D metal printing.

Novanta is one global team with over 26 offices located in The Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  Looking for a great place to work?  You have found it with a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration and empowerment.  Come explore Novanta.

As a Sr. Optical Engineer within Novanta's encoder business, you’ll lead the design and development of optical components and systems, focusing on creating innovative rotary and linear encoder solutions based on customer specifications and product management requirements. You will make critical technical decisions to ensure high-quality, high-performance products and provide technical leadership on complex, high-impact projects. Collaborating closely with cross-functional teams, you will tackle technical challenges and deliver outstanding results. The ideal candidate will be self-motivated, organized, detail-oriented, and adept at multitasking, with a strong background in modelling, simulation, prototyping, problem-solving, and design of complex optical systems. You will also serve as a technical consultant and advisor to executives.

This position is part of Novanta’s Robotics & Automation business unit.  R&A’s cohesive vision, superior technologies, consultative team approach and best-in-class reliability make us the trusted partner in solving the most challenging motion control problems. 

R&A’s precision component and subsystem solutions solve application-specific challenges for technology-driven original equipment manufacturers from a range of markets. 

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead the optical design and development of rotary and linear encoder products, including diffractive optical elements, photosensors, light sources, and encoder scale designs.

• Translate system-level requirements into detailed optical specifications, including MTF, resolution, distortion, field of view, and illumination performance.

• Perform optical modeling, simulation, and analysis using tools such as Zemax to develop and optimize encoder optical architectures.

• Conduct opto-mechanical tolerance analysis, material selection, and define bonding and assembly processes to ensure robust product performance.

• Establish and manage optical performance budgets while balancing performance, manufacturability, reliability, and cost objectives

• Collaborate with electrical, mechanical, firmware, manufacturing, and quality teams to integrate and validate optical solutions.

• Work with external suppliers and manufacturing partners to source, qualify, and scale optical components for high-volume production

• Support product verification, validation, calibration, and field troubleshooting activities to ensure product performance and customer satisfaction.

• Evaluate custom versus commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) optical components and technologies to optimize product cost and performance.

• Investigate and resolve technical challenges encountered during product development, manufacturing, and field operation using structured engineering and root-cause analysis methods.

• Contribute to project execution by supporting requirements definition, deliverables planning, schedules, budgets, and technical risk management.

​Required Experience,

Education, Skills and

Competencies

• Minimum: Bachelor’s degree in Optical Engineering, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, Physics or equivalent field with at least 8 years of related experience. 

• Preferred: Master’s degree in Optical Engineering, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, Physics or equivalent field with 6+ years of prior relevant experience.

• Solid understanding of diffractive optic

• Strong proficiency with optical design tools ( Zemax , Code V, or similar)

• Hands-on lab experience in optical testing, metrology and characterization

• Hands-on experie