Description

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.
• Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) Testing: Build a 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.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Aerospace Engineering, Controls/Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics or 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

• Spacecraft GNC: Direct experience with spacecraft attitude determination and control systems or optical payload pointing. Familiarity with how satellite attitude control systems interact with a high-precision payload pointing system.
• 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 is preferred; e.g., designing control systems or sensors that flew on spacecraft or aircraft.
• Hands-on experience with implementing control algorithms in embedded systems or FPGAs.
• Experience setting up experiments and test platforms for control systems (motion platforms, optical setups, etc.).

About Impulse Space