Principal Optical Design Lead

Unleash Your Potential!

The Leidos Innovations Center currently has an opening for a Principal Optical Design Lead. This is an exciting opportunity to develop disruptive optical technologies that could be integrated into future space systems – a business area in which Leidos is transforming the payloads solutions for the future. 

If this sounds like an environment where you can thrive, keep reading!

As a Design Lead, you will directly support a rapidly growing sector within the Division by leading design, development, and demonstration of new optical technologies that could drastically reduce size, weight, power, and cost of compact satellite optical payloads, and potentially enhancing performance to enable new capabilities.

Your greatest work is ahead! 

Responsibilities would initially be in working with current optical designers to understand the trades in optical payload design, leading investigation into new optics including diffractive optics, meta-optics, and gradient index lenses, and developing new insights and capabilities in integration of such technologies into future optical payload development. Additional responsibilities will likely include working on novel payload concepts through internal R&D (IRAD) effort, and may include the opportunity to serve as a supervisor.

Primary Responsibilities

• Leverage expertise in hybrid optics system design and new optics technologies to lead development of compact satellite optical payloads
• Lead teams focused on modeling and simulation, fabrication, assembly and characterization to rapidly evaluate, integrate, and deploy new optical and photonic technologies
• Leverage expertise in modeling tools to build capabilities in development of new EO/IR technologies for space payloads.
• Build and lead partnerships with internal Leidos teams and external partners to investigate and mature optics technologies, and develop a pipeline to transition them to production and integration
• Support development of optics technology roadmaps to justify strategic IRAD investments to secure future CRAD opportunities.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, optics, or equivalent field with 12+ years of prior relevant experience or Master’s degree in technical domain mentioned with 10+ years of prior relevant experience or Doctorate in technical domain mentioned with 8+ years of prior relevant experience.
• Must be a U.S. Citizen
• Must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance.
• Experience working on inter-disciplinary teams working on challenging DoD problems. 
• Experience in developing hybrid optical systems with novel optical components.
• Expertise in performance evaluations of optical components, including point spread functions (PSFs), modulation transfer functions (MTFs), encircled power, etc.
• Proficient experience with finite element-based design tools such as …