Laser Sytems Engineer (gn) @ Space Defence Venture, Munich

Who we are We are a stealth space defence company. Our mission is to keep order in orbit. Just as fighter jets secure the skies and navy ships secure the seas, we are building the systems that will protect the assets above us: the satellites our economies, security, and daily lives depend on. Space has become contested. As orbit fills with infrastructure and threats alike, Europe needs sovereign means to deter, defend, and uphold law and order beyond the atmosphere. We are at the rare stage where the founding team becomes the company. Today, the team is the three founders, building the first systems, setting the technical direction, and proving the mission. The next people to join will be among the company's first employees. They will not be joining an existing machine. They will help build one. That means real authorship. The architecture, the engineering culture, the operating rhythm, and the standard of execution are still being formed. For the right person, this is the opportunity to help shape a European space defence company from its earliest days. We are looking for mission-driven people who want to defend the high ground, and who are ready to have honest debates about the use of force in space, its limits, and its ethics. Your Role & Responsibilities You will help build the laser and optical systems behind our C-UAS systems and future space payloads. That means working across laser sources, beam combining, steering optics, detector electronics, thermal management, and system integration. Your work will determine whether the system delivers optical power reliably, detects return signals cleanly, survives field conditions, and ultimately performs when it matters. This is one of the first engineering roles. You will work directly with the three founders and have significant influence over core technical decisions from day one. You will not be handed a mature optical architecture to maintain. You will help create it, integrate it, test it in the real world, and evolve it into a deployable system. The work will be broad and practical. One day you might be selecting laser sources and designing a beam path. The next you could be aligning optics, debugging a noisy detector chain, solving thermal issues, evaluating suppliers, or preparing a Class 4 laser system for field testing. The expectation is not that you know everything. It is that you have seen enough real systems to know where they break, and that when they do, you can figure it out fast. What you'll own You will own the laser and optical stack from source selection through to field integration, including: Multispectral laser source selection, specification, and supplier management Beam combining optics and optical path design Galvo-based beam steering, alignment, and optical integration Photodiode return signal detection, from front-end electronics through to signal analysis Laser driver electronics, thermal management, optomechanical design, and field integration You will build for real constraints: high optical power, thermal loads, beam quality, alignment stability, safety, field reliability, and a global photonics supply chain that rarely behaves perfectly. You will also help establish the foundations around the system, including optical test setups, alignment procedures, procurement workflows, safety processes, and the first steps toward space-qualified payloads. What we're looking for We are looking for someone with strong practical depth in photonics, laser physics, or optical engineering. You should bring: Hands-on experience building high-power laser systems, not just modelling or simulation Experience with fibre lasers, diode lasers, DPSS systems, or equivalent high-power sources Practical understanding of beam combining, beam quality, optical alignment, and power delivery Experience designing photodiode receiver chains, including transimpedance amplifiers and signal conditioning Strong intuition for thermal management, high-current driver electronics, and system integration Confidence working across optics, electronics, mechanics, and software to solve problems Laser safety competence for Class 3B and Class 4 systems An MSc or PhD in Photonics, Laser Physics, Optical Engineering, or a related discipline is preferred, but what matters most is having built real systems. You must have NATO member state citizenship. You've probably seen some of this before A laser system that worked beautifully on the optical bench but became difficult to align once packaged. A detector chain that should have worked, until noise, saturation, reflections, or ambient light became the real problem. A thermal design that looked fine on paper but failed under sustained operation. A supplier datasheet that turned out to be optimistic. A field test where the system failed and you had to work backwards from incomplete data to find the root cause. Nice to have Experience with any of the following is a bonus: Zemax / OpticStudio or equivalent optical simulation tools Galvo mirrors, F-theta lenses, fast steering mirrors, or tip-tilt systems Lock-in amplification, time-gated detection, or weak optical signal processing FPGA or microcontroller-based high-speed control Atmospheric beam propagation or laser-target interaction Directed energy, DIRCM, electro-optical defence systems, or defence photonics Building optical systems that operate outside the lab, in real environmental conditions