Senior Controls Engineer (PAT)

About the role

As a Senior Acquisition, Tracking & Pointing Controls Engineer, you will lead the development of the pointing and tracking subsystem for our free-space optical (FSO) laser communication terminal. This role blends optics, sensors, and control theory and involves close collaboration with the optical, photonics, and modem teams to ensure an integrated design.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) architecture for the FSO system to achieve sub-µrad pointing stability.
• Develop pointing budgets that account for spacecraft attitude dynamics, thermal drift, and atmospheric disturbance, and allocate error to subsystems.
• Design and implement algorithms to rapidly acquire transmitter and maintain lock.
• Develop the control loops for fast steering mirrors (FSM) or precision actuators to actively suppress jitter and beam wander.
• Tune controllers to mitigate disturbances and minimize pointing error.
• Build a Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) testbed to validate PAT performance, including hardware-in-loop simulations.
• Rapidly prototype algorithms and simulations to flesh out design.
• Support troubleshooting and iteration during optical alignment sessions and system tests.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Aerospace Engineering, Controls/Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a similar field.
• 5+ years of experience working on pointing, tracking, or guidance/control systems (such as satellite attitude control, gimbal systems, or optical tracking systems).
• Strong foundation in control theory and signal processing.
• Experience designing and tuning feedback control loops for high-precision systems.
• Knowledge of sensor fusion and state estimation.
• Understanding of optical pointing mechanisms, pointing errors, and jitter spectra.
• Experience with gimbals, fast steering mirrors, precision opto-mechanical actuators, or similar hardware.
• Proficiency in programming for algorithm development and real-time implementation.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex hardware/software systems in a lab or field environment.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Direct experience with spacecraft attitude determination and control systems (GNC) or optical payload pointing, including familiarity with how satellite attitude control systems interact with high-precision payload pointing systems.
• Experience working on free-space optical communication pointing/tracking systems or telescopes (e.g., previous development of PAT for laser communications, optical telescopes for imaging satellites, or line-of-sight stabilization for airborne lasers).
• Exposure to adaptive optics systems or tip-tilt correction in telescopes enabling high-frequency correction of beam pointing.
• Experience with low-latency hardware implementations of control loops (e.g., using FPGAs, DSPs, or real-time operating systems to achieve control loop frequencies in the kHz range).
• Familiarity with FPGA development toolchains for implementing high-speed tracking algorithms.
• Aerospace-environment experience (e.g., designing control systems or sensors that flew on spacecraft or aircraft).
• Hands-on experience implementing control algorithms in embedded systems or FPGAs.
• Experience setting up experiments and test platforms for control systems (motion platforms, optical setups, etc.).

Pay

$150,000 - $180,000 / year

Benefits

• Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• Access to a 401(k) retirement plan.
• Long-term incentives in the form of stock options.

This position requires applicants to be either U.S. Persons (i.e., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, lawful permanent U.S. resident (green card holder), an individual granted asylum in the U.S., or an individual admitted in U.S. refugee status) or persons eligible to obtain an export license from the U.S. Departments of State, Commerce, or other applicable U.S. government agencies due to ITAR and EAR regulations.