Job Abstract

Why choose between doing meaningful work and having a fulfilling life? At MITRE, you can have both. That's because MITRE people are committed to tackling our nation's toughest challenges—and we're committed to the long-term well-being of our employees. MITRE is different from most technology companies. We are a not-for-profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest, with no commercial conflicts to influence what we do. The R&D centers we operate for the government create lasting impact in fields as diverse as cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. We're making a difference every day—working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world. Our workplace reflects our values. We offer competitive benefits, exceptional professional development opportunities, and a culture of innovation that embraces diversity, inclusion, flexibility, collaboration, and career growth. If this sounds like the choice you want to make, then choose MITRE—and make a difference with us.

Department Summary:

MITRE Lab’s Quantum Information Sciences, Optics, and Imaging Department serves as a vanguard for MITRE to meet the future needs of our customers, requiring technical excellence while encouraging creativity and fostering interests in current and emerging technologies across its diverse employees. Your future colleagues are a collegial team from diverse technical backgrounds who work across MITRE’s sponsors and partners.

Roles & Responsibilities:

The MITRE Corporation is seeking a smart, energetic engineer or scientist with expertise in optical communications to work in a dynamic environment, which encourages creativity and requires keeping pace with current and emerging technologies and practices. The work will include the design and evaluation of optical communications systems including free space laser communications and fiber communications.  There may be additional opportunities to develop photonics systems for RF processing, and other fields of optical engineering such as directed energy.

The candidate will work in the public interest to provide technical expertise in solving our sponsors’ critical optical communications problems.

• The candidate will lead work to analyze various free space and fiber optical communications systems, including integration challenges and use these analyses to provide recommendations to our sponsors.
• The candidate will use analytic techniques to assess the impact of optical communications systems on operational capabilities and missions.
• The candidate will develop and evaluate novel communications systems for a wide range of missions and applications.
• As needed and desired, the candidate will contribute to other optics tasks (imaging, directed energy, etc.) and other communications tasks (RF, waveform development, networking, etc.)
• The candidate will engage directly with sponsors, stakeholders, and collaborators to ensure optics technologies meet mission needs.
• The candidate will assemble and integrate optical communications hardware for lab research, development, and test.

Basic Qualifications:

• Applicants selected for this position will be subject to a government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information or applicants who are eligible for security clearances.
• Requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 3 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD without experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Deep technical understanding of optical engineering, optoelectronic devices, laser systems, optomechanics, and optical waveforms.
• Familiarity with laboratory work on optical systems, such as research, development, and testing.
• Strong technical writing and oral presentation skills.
• The ability to conduct research and analysis of optical communications systems in a collaborative environment.
• The ability to think critically and be proactive in pursuing research and problem-solving with minimal supervision.
• The ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance.
• This position requires a minimum of 50% hybrid on-site.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Masters or PhD in Optical Science, Physics, or Electrical Engineering.
• Experience in the design and evaluation of free space and fiber optical communications systems.
• Experience with directed energy, imaging, sensing, and computer vision systems.
• Experience in the design and evaluation of cross-cutting imaging technologies for defense, intelligence, transportation, or health.
• The ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret security clearance with additional accesses.

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):

Work Location Type:

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