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Salary: USD 150,000 - 220,000 / 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. The company has over $1 billion in signed contracts across commercial and US government customers and 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.
As a Senior Photonics Engineer focused on free-space optics, you will define how K2 measures and models the atmosphere and how optical hardware is designed to work through it. You will work at the intersection of free-space optical communications, adaptive optics, and integrated photonics, owning the full experimental loop from tabletop emulators that reproduce atmospheric turbulence in the lab, to benches testing optical hardware (free-space receivers, wavefront correction, photonic chips) inside emulated channels, to outdoor links across real turbulence on rooftops and test ranges, and occasional campaigns at mountaintop optical ground stations and observatories.
Key responsibilities include: designing and building tabletop experiments that emulate optical propagation through turbulent media using spatial light modulators and phase screens; validating against target statistics (Cn², r0, scintillation, beam wander, wavefront error, fade statistics); integrating receivers into the loop and measuring coupling efficiency, fading, bit error rate, and control-loop bandwidth; characterizing wavefront sensing and correction hardware (Shack-Hartmann sensors, deformable mirrors, SLMs) alongside photonic-integrated alternatives; conducting outdoor horizontal-path links on rooftops and test ranges, then night campaigns at mountaintop observatories including site coordination, laser-safety approvals, equipment transport, and data reduction; owning K2's optical propagation and channel models long-term by building them in Python, calibrating continuously against lab and field data, quantifying uncertainty, and translating results into requirements; defining the experiment roadmap to identify which measurements most reduce model uncertainty and setting the lab-to-field test plan; automating experiments on the team's shared test framework so lab and field data share one pipeline; and mentoring engineers and technicians supporting the experiments.
You will work closely with PIC designers, test engineers, and K2's optical payload team, and as K2's payloads grow, you will consult on remote-sensing and other payloads that look through the atmosphere.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Bachelor's degree in optics, physics, electrical engineering, or a related technical field
- 5+ years of hands-on free-space optics experience in free-space optical communications, adaptive optics, or atmospheric propagation (a relevant PhD counts toward this)
- Led free-space optical experiments end to end: designing and aligning benches, taking data, and correlating it with models
- Working knowledge of optical turbulence and propagation theory (Cn², Fried parameter, Rytov variance), with Python for modeling and analysis
NICE TO HAVE:
- MS or PhD in optics, physics, or a related field
- Adaptive optics experience in astronomy, beam control, or free-space optical communications
- Experience with photonic integrated circuits, photonic lanterns, or fiber coupling through turbulence
- Pointing, acquisition, and tracking (fast steering mirrors, beacon tracking) or optical link performance analysis (BER, SNR, scintillation and fading)
- Spatial light modulators, deformable or fast steering mirrors, or phase-plate turbulence emulators
- Field campaigns at an observatory or outdoor optical test range, including night operations
- Remote sensing, lidar, or atmospheric characterization instruments
- Wave-optics simulation tools (e.g., AOTools, WaveProp) and Zemax
Note: Export control compliance required—must be a U.S. Person as defined by ITAR or eligible for a federally issued export control license.
