Optical Systems Engineer

Working for Open Cosmos

Aim high, go beyond! At Open Cosmos we are solving the world’s biggest challenges from space, providing businesses, governments and researchers access to more readily available information than ever before - ready for the challenge? Then read on… 

Working in the Systems Team

The successful candidate will be joining Open Cosmos’ systems team and will be responsible to technically manage the development and implementation of satellite missions to fulfil the company needs as well as providing optical payload expertise across company missions, while feeding onto the product roadmap to continuously improve our services with a very customer centric attitude.

What will you be doing?

You will be managing all engineering aspects of our space missions from requirements capture through to concept definition, design, implementation, all levels of testing and orbital operations support. This role has a specialist aspect where you’ll be adding your expertise in optical payloads and managing work packages in space mission relating to this covering both programmatic and technical aspects. This will include evaluating image quality and performance of optical payloads, as well as supporting the AIT/AIV phases, undertaking the aligning and calibration.

You will be working with multiple stakeholders, supporting bid and sales teams, running customer meetings and presentations at all phases of the project., and most importantly, collaborating with payload systems providers to ensure the solution is delivered on time and according to specification.

This is a great opportunity to propose improvements to increase the performance of Open Cosmos satellites!

What you need to be successful

• As we said, you’ll be managing optical space systems, so strong knowledge of Earth observation, remote sensing and optical designs is essential with the ability to apply this knowledge to system designs.
• To effectively manage image quality budgets, you should have a thorough understanding of MTF, SNR, resolution, etc.
• You’ll be planning and supporting AIT and AIV activities, so we’ll expect you to be familiar with optical systems manufacturing, characterisation and testing.
• You’ll be performing mission analysis and system design, so be ready to manage requirements and utilise MBSE tools, implement FMECA and design FDIR, manage system budgets and define CONOPs.
• To coordinate other technical teams involved in the design process you should have strong applied knowledge of the satellite subsystems, in addition to optical payloads: power system, on-board data handling, AOCS, comms, propulsion, mechanical, thermal.

This is a hybrid role - sometimes you will need to be in the lab every day for 1 or 2 weeks at a time to support a test campaign, at other times, you may work remotely if you choose - the requirements fluctuate and you should be prepared and ready to support your colleagues in the lab and office as the business needs.