Electro-Optical/Adaptive Optics Engineer

Xcimer Energy leverages decades of research on Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) combined with groundbreaking new laser architecture. Our mission is to deploy fusion power plants to meet global decarbonization goals as fast as possible. Xcimer has assembled a team of leaders in tough tech, fusion science, and manufacturing with a track record of rapid execution. Supported by leading investors, Xcimer is uniquely positioned to deliver limitless, clean, fusion power to combat climate change. Join us in powering a better world with inertial fusion! 

This is a full-time, onsite role based at our headquarters in Denver, CO. 

Xcimer’s Directed Energy programs apply the high-energy pulsed laser technology behind our fusion work to national security problems. We are seeking a Principal Electro-Optical/Adaptive Optics Engineer to serve as the adaptive optics and wavefront control authority for a directed-energy laser demonstrator. You will own the adaptive optics requirements, the performance budgets that justify them, and the plan and resources that implement them. You will be a primary technical interface for items such as: negotiating requirements and interfaces, reviewing partner designs and ours against the same performance model, and contributing to a shared development effort rather than handing off a specification. 

Xcimer’s central goal is commercial fusion, and this role carries technology in both directions. Beam control lessons from the Directed Energy program feed directly into our fusion beamlines, where the same deep-UV wavefront and pointing problems reappear at a different scale and duty cycle. You will help set the beam control direction for fusion on the strength of what you deliver on Directed Energy. 

Additionally, we are building the adaptive optics group. You will help set the technical standards and development practices it works to, mentor the engineers and scientists in it, and take on technology development that outlives any single program. We move on real hardware quickly. We want the governing equations and a first-order layout before money is committed, and we want a cheap experiment that could break the concept shortly after. We are looking for our scientists and engineers to apply their technical expertise, problem solving skills, and dedication to quality to positively impact the future of energy and national security! 

Responsibilities:

Requirements and Performance Modeling 

• Own adaptive optics and wavefront control requirements for the Directed Energy program, from the top-level irradiance and beam quality objectives down to component and interface specifications. 
• Build and maintain the end-to-end performance model: propagation through atmospheric turbulence and thermal blooming, wave-optics prediction of far-field irradiance, and a wavefront error budget resolved into fitting, temporal, measurement, calibration, and anisoplanatic terms. 
• Set the resulting requirements on deformable mirrors, wavefront sensors, reconstructors, and the real-time control loop, including bandwidth, latency, and disturbance rejection budgets, and review vendor and partner designs against them.