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Salary: USD 110,000 - 200,000 / annual
K2 Space is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, backed by over $1 billion in funding from leading investors including Altimeter Capital, ICONIQ, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and T. Rowe Price. With over $1 billion in signed contracts across commercial and US government customers, K2 is mass-producing high-power satellite platforms for missions from LEO to deep space, with multiple launches planned for 2027 and scaling to 100 satellites per year.
The company is uniquely positioned to develop, test, and deploy ambitious optical payloads across MEO, GEO, cislunar, and deep space. Space-based optical payloads enable applications such as forest fire detection, climate and atmospheric monitoring, hyper-spectral imaging, and laser-altimetry for planetary science.
As an Optical Engineer, you will contribute to a payload portfolio spanning specialty-fiber lasers and photonic systems, 0.1–1 meter-class diffraction-limited telescopes, focal-plane instrumentation, and compact free-space assemblies. You will work closely with senior and principal engineers while gaining exposure to the full lifecycle of optical systems, from initial analysis and risk reduction through manufacturing, ground testing, and on-orbit operation.
Key responsibilities include:
- Own well-bounded technical deliverables from problem definition through documented, validated results (custom optical components, fixtures, data analysis, test campaigns, manufacturing processes, small optical assemblies).
- Build, align, calibrate, automate, and maintain custom free-space and fiber-optic test systems, including optics-intensive hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure.
- Plan and execute experiments characterizing optical components and assemblies, isolating performance-degradation mechanisms, and quantifying their effects on system performance.
- Develop optical models, performance budgets, tolerance analyses, and data-processing tools; correlate predictions with test results and translate findings into requirements and design changes.
- Design, specify, procure, and validate custom optics, optomechanical components, calibration hardware, fixtures, and test equipment.
- Develop and qualify repeatable optical fabrication and assembly processes for high-volume production (fiber splicing, adhesive bonding, alignment, cleaning, inspection, test).
- Support environmental qualification, reliability testing, payload integration, flight-readiness activities, and on-orbit commissioning; troubleshoot anomalies and drive root-cause-based hardware or process changes.
- Communicate technical work through design reviews, test plans and reports, drawings, specifications, procedures, and configuration-controlled data.
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in optical engineering, physics, applied physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 1+ years of relevant experience. Internships, co-ops, academic research, student engineering teams, and substantial personal projects count toward this requirement.
- Working knowledge of geometrical and physical optics and familiarity with common free-space optical, fiber-optic, and optomechanical components.
Nice to have:
- Hands-on experience building, aligning, testing, or troubleshooting optical setups through industry, research, coursework, or independent projects.
- Ability to navigate optical-vendor catalogs, select appropriate commercial components, and explain the technical basis for selections.
- Experience using Python, MATLAB, LabVIEW, or similar environments for technical data analysis, image processing, simulation, or laboratory automation.
- Strong technical communication skills and ability to explain assumptions, evidence, uncertainty, failures, and proposed next steps.
- Familiarity with optical design or analysis tools such as OpticStudio, CODE V, FRED, LightTools, Lumerical, or equivalent software.
- Experience with detectors or focal-plane arrays, quantitative image processing, radiometry, optical calibration, or noise analysis.
- Experience with precision optomechanics, CAD, optical mechanisms, lasers, integrated photonics, or specialty fibers.
- Exposure to manufacturing-process development, measurement uncertainty, environmental testing, contamination control, or failure modes of hardware in space environments.
- Curiosity, sound engineering judgment, and demonstrated ability to make independent progress on unfamiliar technical problems.
