foundational - Optical Payload Systems Engineer
Requirements
• You don't need a decade of flight heritage. We care far more about strong fundamentals, hunger, and the ability to learn fast in a hands-on environment. • A degree in physics, optical engineering, aerospace/mechanical/electrical engineering, or a closely related field. • A solid grasp of optics fundamentals - geometrical and physical optics, radiometry, and basic detector/laser principles. • Hands-on instincts: you like building, aligning, breaking, and fixing real hardware, not just simulating it. • Comfort with ambiguity and ownership. You're energised by a startup where scope is broad, priorities shift, and no one hands you a fully-specified task list. • Clear communication and a collaborative, low-ego approach to working across software and hardware. • UK citizenship. Our work spans dual-use technology and touches UK and international export controls on ranging, tracking, and orbit-determination. UK citizenship is a firm requirement for this role. • Exposure to optical design software (Zemax or Code V). • Any hands-on experience with space hardware, CubeSats/smallsats, optical ground stations, LiDAR, or laser systems - academic projects and competitions absolutely count. • Familiarity with environmental/space qualification testing. • Scripting for data analysis (Python, MATLAB, or similar). • Awareness of laser safety standards (e.g. BS EN 60825).
Responsibilities
• This is not a theoretical role. You'll help design, build, and test compact optical payloads that ride on small satellites and interoperate with our ground network and our data platform. It's hands-on, physics-first work with a short path from your bench to something that ends up in orbit. • You'll work across the full lifecycle of a payload, from early concept and modelling through build, alignment, and environmental test, alongside a small team of software and hardware engineers who don't draw hard lines between disciplines. • Specifically, you'll get stuck into: • Payload design & build. Contributing to the optical and opto-mechanical design of small space-based payloads - component selection (optics, detectors, sources), layout, tolerancing, and assembly of optical benches and modules. • Modelling & analysis. Building link budgets and performance models covering radiometry, atmospheric transmission, pointing, and detector probability of detection, and using them to make real design decisions. • Integration, test & verification. Assembling and aligning optical hardware, then putting it through environmental qualification (thermal, vibration, vacuum) and performance characterisation - and learning what actually survives launch. • Ground-to-space validation. Working with the ground systems team to validate ranging precision and pointing accuracy end-to-end, so the payload and the network behave as one system. • Owning your corner. Documenting designs, feeding lessons back into the next iteration, and taking genuine responsibility for a slice of the payload as we grow.
Benefits
• Real ownership. A high-impact role with genuine autonomy in a new startup - your contributions directly shape our product and our success. • Cutting-edge work. Meaningful, challenging, complex problems at the frontier of the space domain. • Equity that matters. Government-backed EMI scheme options in a fast-growing, VC-backed company. • A team worth learning from. A dynamic, collaborative environment built on innovation, creativity, and teamwork - with room to grow fast. • A mission you can believe in. What we build underpins the future of Earth observation and space traffic control.
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