LWIR Optical Hardware / Opto-Mechanical Engineer

Job Description Job Description America is critically deficient in production of defensive munitions- we currently produce shipborne interceptors in the few hundreds per year while our adversaries are producing offensive threats in the tens of thousands per year. Furientis was started to help solve this problem- introducing a new class of cost-effective, high production rate, interceptor missiles. Were seeking motivated individuals who internalize this problem and are eager to apply their past experience in similar industries (aerospace, defense, automotive/racing, robotics) and out of the box thinking to solve this problem for the US and its allies. About the Team The Seeker Team builds the eyes and the targeting logic of our weapon system: a low-cost, mass-producible, multimodal missile seeker that leans on commercial supply chains where they outperform the defense legacy, with supply-chain security engineered in from day one. On a modern missile, the seeker is 40 to 60% of unit cost and often drives overly long delivery cycles; accordingly, the seeker team is at the tip of the spear for delivering value to our customers and to the taxpayer.
Seeker design has exactly two real constraints: physics and mission. Supply chain, vendor lead time, qualification cost, "the way its always been done": none of that stops us. We are a small, deeply technical team that drives capability through ingenuity and bias for action and ships hardware that flies. This is a wear-many-hats environment where you must be comfortable "building the airplane in flight" and stepping well outside your comfort zone; a narrowly scoped role with clean handoffs is not what this team offers.
This is an AI-native team. Through fluent use of cutting-edge agentic coding tools, one engineer here consistently out-delivers a much larger conventional team. You will have opinions about where these tools help and where they do not, provide governance input, and build AI into your workflow from day one.
About the Role You will be the responsible engineer for the optical and opto-mechanical subsystem of our seeker: lens prescriptions (with optical designers), mounts, athermalization, FPA interface and detector thermal solution, cold stops, windows and domes, packaging, alignment, calibration, and qualification, and you will execute the day-to-day work that gets that design built, integrated, qualified, and into volume production. You report to the seeker lead, who carries final technical authority. Bring deeply considered design options, error budgets, and trade-study results when a decision needs to be made, then execute with rigor and speed. This is a hands-on role for an engineer who has already taken optical hardware from concept through environmental qualification (ideally tactical, airborne, or missile-class) and is ready to do it again, faster and at higher volume.
What Youll Do Drive the opto-mechanical design of the LWIR seeker head: lens stack, mounts, baffles, cold stops, window and dome, FPA interface, detector thermal solution, packaging, and alignment.
Partner with optical designers on lens prescriptions; review designs in Zemax or Code V and reason about Seidel/Zernike aberrations from first principles.
Own design-constraint definition and error-budget optimization across the optical column; flow tolerances down to suppliers and up to the system performance model.
Develop athermalized mounts, bonded and elastomeric interfaces, and window/dome assemblies that survive the high-g, wide-temperature, vibration, and shock environment of a tactical seeker.
Integrate the FPA thermal solution (heat spreaders, heat pipes, TECs, cold stops, cold-shield interface) to hit detector NETD, dwell-time, and cool-down targets within tight volume and power budgets.
Build full optical tolerance budgets (Monte Carlo and worst-case) across manufacturing, alignment, thermal, packaging, and aging effects.
Technically qualify suppliers for IR optics, AR coatings, windows, and domes; bring DFM and design-to-cost recommendations across material choices (Ge, Si, ZnSe, chalcogenide). The Head of Supply Chain owns commercial terms.
Develop alignment, bonding, and assembly procedures suitable for high-rate production, not one-off lab builds.
Build and execute the optical metrology and test approach: interferometry, MTF, encircled energy, boresight, transmission, and stray light.
Plan and execute environmental qualification per MIL-STD-810 and program-specific environments (vibration, shock, thermal, humidity, altitude, EMI/EMC, salt fog, sand/dust, high-g).
Stand up bench fixtures and integration test setups: solder eval kits and breakout boards, bring up SBC/SoM carrier boards, and stitch together the sensor, power, and I/O plumbing.
Skills Were Hiring For B.S. in Optical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or related; M.S. preferred.
7 to 9 years of hands-on IR or precision optical hardware design and integration, with responsibility for an opto-mechanical assembly from CAD through environmental qualification.
Understanding of geometric and wave optics from first principles, including working fluency with Seidel and Zernike aberration formalisms; able to diagnose an aberrated system at the bench.
Working fluency with Zemax or Code V; reads and reviews prescriptions and tolerance flowdowns competently.
Strong CAD (SolidWorks, NX, or Creo) and GD&T to ASME Y14.5.
Hands-on optical metrology and test: benchtop interferometry (Fizeau, Twyman-Green, or equivalent), MTF, encircled energy, boresight, focal-plane mapping, transmission, stray light.
Athermal design, error-budget construction, tolerance analysis, and bonded/elastomeric optical mounting for IR systems, including window and dome design.
Optical packaging from CAD assembly to a volume-producible, environmentally qualified package, including detector thermal integration.
System hardening and survivability testing of optical systems for tactical, airborne, or munition-class environments per MIL-STD-810.
Hands-on MWIR and/or LWIR phenomenology: radiometry, atmospheric transmission, target/background signatures, NETD, and sensitivity-budget reasoning sufficient to defend seeker performance claims.
Demonstrated history of building technical-side vendor relationships across the IR optical-hardware supply chain. Candidates without a real working network in IR optics will not be considered.
Bias for low-cost, ingenious optical-hardware solutions: a track record of meeting requirements at meaningfully lower unit cost than the legacy approach.
AI-native working style: daily use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Kilo, or similar) for tolerance scripting, supplier comparisons, drawing markup, and report generation.
Electronics competency: comfortable soldering eval kits, bringing up SBC/SoM carrier boards, and stitching together basic edge-hardware benches and test fixtures well enough to make things work end-to-end.
Bonus Points For Direct LWIR (8 to 14 µm) optical assemblies in a tactical or airborne product.
High-g optical assembly experience (sustained launch loads or hard-impact events).
Production transition: moved an optical assembly from prototype to volume manufacturing.
IR coatings expertise (DLC, hydrophobic, AR).
Stray-light analysis with FRED, ASAP, or TracePro.
Direct missile, munition, or seeker program experience.
Hobbyist drone build and flight experience that translates to packaging, vibration, and field-handling intuition.
Eligibility & Logistics Location: On-site at our Los Angeles, CA HQ; remote work is not available. Monthly weekend travel for test events and supplier engagements. Clearance: A clearance is not required for this position. Must be a U.S. Person.
Equal Opportunity & Export Compliance Furientis is an equal-opportunity employer. To comply with U.S. export control laws, employment is contingent on eligibility to access export-controlled information.
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