Senior Optical Engineer - Product Development

Position Title: Senior Optical Engineer – Product Development

Reporting Structure: Reports directly to Croptix CEO

Compensation: $90,000 – $120,000 base annual salary + benefits

This position is a full-time exempt position sited in State College, PA. This is NOT a remote work opportunity. The Senior Optical Engineer position is expected to fully engage in routine, on-site work and collaboration with the team located at Innovation Park in State College, PA.

Summary:

Croptix (www.croptix.ag, d/b/a of Atoptix, Inc.) is a venture-backed, Ag-tech company headquartered in State College, PA. Croptix is revolutionizing farming with its intelligent Ag platform, leveraging sensor data and cutting-edge analytics to empower farmers with real-time insights for disease management and crop health optimization.  Croptix provides services for early detection of disease and nutrition issues in crops, which leads to reduced spread of the disease and maintaining healthy, high-quality fruit production and profitability. With the platform's field-deployable sensors and advanced analytics, the service provides timely interventions, ensuring the health and success of the farmer's crops. By detecting both disease and nutrition issues early, Croptix helps farmers keep their crops thriving.

Croptix is seeking to hire a smart, exceptional individual, capable of adding even more horsepower to our new product development pipeline, allowing Croptix to continue to expand and deliver effective tools to farmers so they can manage plant health and grow healthier crops.

Team Needs:

Croptix is seeking a Senior Optical Engineer with extensive training in optical spectroscopy with an advanced degree in Optical Engineering or similar (Ph.D. or Master's degree with 5+ years industry experience). The Senior Optical Engineer will work in product development and utilize their training and experience to design, build, and test optical systems. Another key responsibility of this role is to develop new analysis toolsets and methods for analysis of optical instrumentation generated data. The Senior Optical Engineer will work closely with other members of the Croptix team to integrate and test the developed systems in Croptix prototype instruments.

This is a full-time exempt position at a small-but-growing company. Candidates should demonstrate a thorough understanding of non-linear optics, spectroscopy, and prior application of this knowledge in prototype and/or product development. A competitive employment package will be offered to a candidate who best demonstrates these qualities. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.

Job Duties and Responsibilities (included but are not limited to):

• Lead design, development, and testing of new optical sensor hardware
• Validate concepts through breadboard builds and analysis
• Analyze problems in system design, plan and conduct investigations, and develop solution proposals
• Assist in all development phases, from prototype through to product release
• Develop test plans, create test procedures, perform tests and data reduction, and evaluate test data
• Interface with manufacturing personnel to coordinate the build of modified or new prototype assemblies
• Develop data analysis methods, including mathematical justification, documentation, and implementation in Python, R, or similar
• Perform statistical analyses of complex systems based on theory, simulations, and experimental data
• Characterize and understand interaction of light with scattering media
• Support technical debugging of optical systems and efforts through data analysis
• Perform analysis and optimization of optical systems to ensure systems achieve desired design specifications and modify designs based upon test results, when necessary
• Define test requirements per quality and reliability standards of the industry
• Provide presentations to review or showcase work

Skills, Qualifications & Requirements:

• Education: Master’s degree or Ph.D. degree in Optical Engineering or closely related field
• 5+ years industry experience in optical hardware product development
• Extensive knowledge of theory and application of radiative transfer and quantitative spectroscopy with emphasis in the optical domain
• Extensive experience working in an optical laboratory environment

Disclaimer:

• The Company reserves the right to alter, change, modify and/or terminate this job posting at any time without notice, or obligation. No recruiters, please; principal applicants only
• Croptix is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Employment with our company is based solely on a person's merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, family status, marital status, pregnancy, or related condition (including breastfeeding), sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status, or any other or any other basis protected by law
• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential job functions. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information

To Apply:

If you are excited about the position and feel that you could bring valuable experience to our team, please complete the online application form and include a cover letter/CV and any additional examples of your work that you would like to be included in your consideration for the open position!