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9 Mothers is a venture-backed defense technology company building AI-powered counter-drone systems designed to intercept and neutralize Group 1/sUAS threats in real-time. The company develops low-power systems for edge deployment on vehicles, at bases, and in field operations.
You will own the optical subsystems on robotic weapon platforms, responsible for cameras, thermal imagers, rangefinders, and sensor heads that enable target acquisition and engagement. This role focuses on the mechanical and thermal aspects of optics integration: designing mounts, housings, windows, and seals that maintain alignment and image quality under extreme conditions—weapon recoil, thermal cycling from 0°F to 140°F, dust, rain, and vibration.
This is not an optical design role; lens prescriptions are handled by dedicated optical designers. Your expertise translates their designs into field-hardened assemblies. You will design kinematic, semi-kinematic, flexure, bonded, and retained mounts for lenses, windows, mirrors, filters, and focal plane assemblies. You will manage the optomechanical error budget, control preload and bond-line thickness, and ensure mounts stay aligned through the product lifecycle.
You will select materials strategically—balancing coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) matching, stiffness, mass, machinability, corrosion resistance, and cost. You will run athermalization math for focus and boresight stability, design sealed and purged housings to keep moisture and contaminants off optics for years in the field, and manage shock and vibration through structural analysis and isolation design.
This is a hands-on role. You will build and align assemblies, conduct thermal cycling and vibration testing, correlate FEA to test results, develop alignment and boresighting fixtures for production, and support field operations at the range. You will work closely with optical designers, machine shops, and suppliers to ensure designs are manufacturable and vendors are qualified.
The team values field-ready capability over polished presentations. You will have autonomy to make technical decisions, direct influence on product roadmap, and early equity as a foundational contributor.
**Requirements:**
- 10+ years of optomechanical engineering experience with optical assemblies that shipped and performed in harsh field environments
- Deep, hands-on expertise in kinematic and exact-constraint mounting; ability to explain degrees of freedom in mounts and discuss design failures
- Strong materials judgment: CTE matching, athermalization of focus and boresight, adhesive and bond-line design, cost/lead-time trade-offs across aluminum, stainless, titanium, Invar, and composites
- Practical shock and vibration experience: modal analysis, random vibration and shock response, isolation, preload design, and MIL-STD-810 or equivalent test methods
- Experience designing and building sealed optical housings: O-ring and gasket design, dry nitrogen purge, desiccants, pressure equalization, window selection and mounting, contamination control
- Fluency with optical tolerance and error budgets; ability to read lens prescriptions and translate image-quality and boresight requirements into mechanical requirements
- Proficiency in FEA (modal, structural, thermal) with judgment about model validity
- Strong GD&T and drawing skills; ability to fully define optical assemblies for supplier manufacturing
- Hands-on alignment and test skills: autocollimators, collimators, alignment telescopes, interferometry or MTF benches, custom fixture design
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, optical engineering, physics, or equivalent experience
- Efficient, low-ego, collaborative approach; ability to clearly communicate design constraints and move work forward
**Nice-to-Have:**
- Experience with weapon-mounted or gun-fire-exposed optics (fire control sensors, weapon sights, remote weapon stations, gimbaled EO/IR turrets)
- Experience with infrared optics and windows (germanium, ZnS, ZnSe, chalcogenides, sapphire) and their mounting, coating, and thermal characteristics; uncooled thermal core integration
- Experience with laser rangefinders or active optical systems, including transmit/receive boresight
- STOP (Structural-Thermal-Optical) analysis experience with Zemax OpticStudio, Code V, or Sigmadyne SigFit
- Gimbal and stabilized-platform design experience
- Experience scaling optical assemblies from prototype to rate production, including vendor qualification and production alignment fixtures
- Interest in firearms and their effects on mounted systems
- Venture-backed hardware startup experience
