Principal Electro-Optical/Adaptive Optics Engineer, Directed Energy

We need to output HTML fragment with headings

for sections: About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule. Only include sections that have real specific content. The posting includes description (mission, role description) which could be "About the role". Responsibilities are listed. Requirements are listed (Education, Experience, etc). There's also "Desired" which could be considered Qualifications or Skills. Benefits are listed. Pay and Schedule not mentioned, so omit those sections. Also need to include maybe a short paragraph for metadata (full-time, onsite role based at headquarters in Denver, CO). Could be part of About the role. We must not repeat job title as heading. No Job ID etc. Remove boilerplate like EEO, application instructions, etc. Also remove navigation, cookie, legal, etc. The posting includes an EEO section at end; we must remove that. Also remove "Equal Employment Opportunity" etc. Also remove "Benefits" section we keep but need to trim to only substantive content; the benefits paragraph ends abruptly: "Eligible employees also receive equity, allowing them to share in the co". It's cut off; we must preserve ALL substantive information; but the text is incomplete. We should keep what is there: "Benefits Xcimer offers a comprehensive benefits package designed to support employee health, well-being, and long-term success. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage; basic and supplemental life insurance; short- and long-term disability; paid parental leave for employees at the time of birth or adoption; and a 401(k) with a company match of up to 6%. Eligible employees also receive equity, allowing them to share in the co". That's incomplete; but we must preserve it as is? The instruction: Preserve ALL substantive information; do NOT invent or summarize away detail. So we keep the text exactly as given, even if truncated. However we might consider that it's likely a copy-paste error; but we must not invent. So we keep the fragment. We also need to remove duplicated lines. There's no duplication visible. We need to output only HTML fragment, no markdown fences. Structure:

About the role

... (mission description, full-time onsite role based at headquarters in Denver, CO)

Responsibilities

• ... each responsibility item

We need to break responsibilities into list items. The responsibilities section has several paragraphs with headings inside? Actually the responsibilities block includes headings: "Requirements And Performance Modeling", "Vendor and Partner Engagement", "Integration, Test, and Commissioning", "Technical Stewardship and Group Growth". Those are subheadings within responsibilities. Should we treat them as separate headings? The instruction: use

for section headings (e.g. About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule). It doesn't forbid using

for subsections? It says use

for section headings (list). Likely only top-level sections. But we could keep the responsibility subheadings as

or just bold? Not allowed? The instruction only mentions using

for section headings; doesn't forbid other headings, but to be safe we could keep them as

or just . However we must output only HTML fragment; we can use

for subheadings inside responsibilities. The instruction didn't forbid other heading levels; just said use

for section headings (e.g. About the role, Responsibilities...). It didn't say we cannot use other headings. So we can use

for subheadings. Similarly for Requirements section: there are Education, Experience, Desired. Could use

subheadings. We need to preserve all substantive info. Let's extract About the role text: "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!" That's the about role. Now Responsibilities: we have four subsections. We'll extract each bullet. First subsection: "Requirements And Performance Modeling" with paragraphs: - 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. - Lead trade studies and architecture decisions: correction topology, actuator count and stroke, sensing approach and wavelength, sampling and control rates, and where the system is limited by physics rather than by hardware. - Ensure designs meet performance, reliability, and operability requirements, and identify technical risks with mitigation plans in coordination with program management. - Translate lessons learned and key developments from Directed Energy beam control into beam control goals and requirements for Xcimer’s fusion program, and advise the fusion adaptive optics effort on architecture and component selection where the two programs share technology. Second subsection: "Vendor and Partner Engagement" - Act as a primary technical interface to our external program partners on adaptive optics and beam control. - Negotiate interfaces and requirements, participate in joint design reviews, and carry a substantive share of a joint development effort. - Own the technical side of adaptive optics procurements and development subcontracts: statements of work, specification negotiation, vendor technical reviews, and acceptance criteria and testing. - Plan and defend the resources the adaptive optics scope needs: scope, schedule, staffing, and build-versus-buy calls, including where a commercial system suffices and where development is unavoidable. - Act as the primary technical interface for resolving performance, schedule, and integration issues with suppliers. - Communicate complex beam control trades clearly to audiences ranging from partner engineers to program leadership. Third subsection: "Integration, Test, and Commissioning" - Define the proof-of-concept and risk-reduction experiments that settle open questions, then direct optical engineers, laser scientists, and technicians to run them and interpret the results. - Define and review laboratory and in-situ test plans that validate performance and closed-loop operation, and approve the resulting test reports. - Provide guidance and best practices to other engineers in the assembly, integration, and test of beam control hardware within the beamline environment, including contamination-control discipline appropriate to deep-UV, high-fluence optics. - Work with control system engineers to integrate adaptive optics within the larger laser control system, helping define required controls, interlocks, and operator feedback. - Support commissioning activities and the transition to reliable, repeatable operations, including field or range testing where required. Fourth subsection: "Technical Stewardship and Group Growth" - Author and defend artifacts in Xcimer’s gated design review process, and serve as a reviewer on others’ packages. - Establish technical standards, documentation practices, and development workflows for the adaptive optics group. - Mentor engineers and scientists working on adaptive optics and wavefront control, across both the Directed Energy and fusion programs. - Participate in hiring and onboarding as the group grows. - Take on technology development that outlives any single program. Now Requirements section: includes Education, Experience, Desired. Education: "Advanced degree in optics, physics, electrical engineering, or a closely related field." Experience: list many bullet-like sentences. We need to capture all. Let's extract the Experience paragraph: "Experience: 8+ years of optical science/engineering experience, including 5+ years in adaptive optics, wavefront sensing and control, directed energy, or closely related high-speed optical/laser control systems. A track record of delivering adaptive optics or beam control systems in industry, national labs, or observatories. Demonstrated ownership of adaptive optics requirements and performance budgets on a real program, including the wavefront error budget and its allocation across subsystems. Laser beam propagation through atmospheric turbulence, including turbulence characterization and its consequences for correction (r₀, Cₙ² profiles, Greenwood and Tyler frequencies, isoplanatic angle), and thermal blooming. Demonstrated use of a wave-optics propagation code for system performance prediction, including codes you wrote yourself, and the ability to state and defend what the model does and does not capture. Hands-on working knowledge of deformable mirrors, wavefront sensors, and high-bandwidth feedback control, sufficient to specify them, review a vendor’s implementation, and judge whether a delivered system meets its requirements. Ability to set and audit closed-loop control requirements: bandwidth, latency, sampling, reconstructor approach, and disturbance rejection. Experience working directly with external vendors or partner organizations on custom optical and electro-optical systems, including specification negotiation and design reviews. Experience directing the technical work of other engineers, scientists, or technicians through a substantial task. Experience with high-energy or high-intensity laser systems and the constraints they place on optics, including damage threshold and thermal management. Advanced verbal and written communication skills, including technical documentation, requirements definition, and presentation to internal and external audiences. Willingness to travel to partner facilities and test sites. Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum." That's all Experience. Now Desired: list many items. "Desired: Experience on directed energy programs, including high-energy laser beam control, target tracking, or field test campaigns. Experience delivering a custom adaptive optics system from concept through commissioning. Familiarity with the pointing and tracking side of beam control (gimbals, fast steering mirrors, jitter and line-of-sight stability budgets) and how it hands off to wavefront correction. Experience with beacon and reference-wave strategies, including target-return and illuminator-based sensing. Familiarity with real-time software, FPGA-based control, or low-latency computing architectures. Experience with predictive or optimal control, system identification, or reconstructor optimization applied to a real loop. Experience with adaptive optics or wavefront correction on large-aperture, high-energy pulsed beamlines. Experience with wave