Digantara is a leading Space Surveillance and Intelligence company focused on ensuring orbital safety and sustainability. With expertise in space-based detection, tracking, identification, and monitoring, Digantara provides comprehensive domain awareness across regimes, allowing end users to have actionable intelligence on a single platform. At the core of its infrastructure lies a sophisticated integration of hardware and software capabilities aligned with the key principles of situational awareness: perception (data collection), comprehension (data processing), and prediction (analytics). This holistic approach empowers Digantara to monitor all Resident Space Objects (RSOs) in orbit, fostering comprehensive domain awareness.

Digantara is seeking an Optical Engineer to design and develop cutting-edge optical systems for its ground—and space-based telescopes. The engineer will be responsible for designing, developing, and testing advanced ground- and space-based telescopes that suit the Space Surveillance application.

Why Us?

• Competitive incentives, a galvanizing workspace, a blazing team, and frequent outings—pretty much everything you've heard about a startup, plus you get to work on space technology.

• Hustle in a well-funded startup, allowing you to take charge of your responsibilities and create your moonshot.

Ideal Candidate:

Someone with expertise in designing satellite electro-optical payloads or ground telescopes for high-resolution astronomy.

Responsibilities:

• Design a suite of optical systems of various apertures and focal lengths to satisfy the quality and performance metrics for Space Situational Awareness (SSA).

• Validate and optimize designs using optical simulations with software such as ZEMAX/Code V to achieve the desired levels of focusing, aberration, stray light, distortion, and relative illumination.

• Develop a dedicated set of specifications and optical system architecture suitable for both space-based and ground-based telescopes.

• Collaborate with optics manufacturers to refine designs and fabricate telescopes that meet the highest quality requirements.

• Perform STOP analysis, tolerance analysis, and optimize designs for manufacturability and cost-effectiveness.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (mechanical, systems) to integrate optical systems into larger products.

• Troubleshoot and resolve optical system issues during development and production.

• Document the optical design, analyses, and test results thoroughly.

Required Qualification:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree or PhD in optics/physics/ Engineering physics/Applied optics/astronomy or any relevant field.

• 2 to 4 years of industry experience or significant aptitude in optical systems design, simulations, and testing.

• Demonstrated experience in designing optical systems & telescope designs.

• In-depth knowledge of light propagation methods, optical systems, stray light analysis, and optical imaging concepts.

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills

Preferred Skills: 

• Hands-on experience with optical metrology, environmental testing, and space-qualified materials and adhesives.

• Solid understanding of thermal effects on optics and techniques for optical-thermal optimization.

• Experience in stray light analysis, GD&T, and tight tolerance optomechanical systems.

• Experience in MTF and SNR calculations, radiometric analysis, and system performance prediction.

• Familiarity with MATLAB, Python, or equivalent tools for analysis.

Job Location: Hebbal, Bengaluru