Exowatt

Exowatt

Lead Optical Engineer (Austin, TX)

Austin, TX · Mid

Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 129 days ago
PythonC++MATLABAWSSystems EngineeringElectrical EngineeringCommunicationProblem SolvingRenewable EnergyTolerance Analysis

Stay score

odds of building a lasting career here

37Risky
Cap-exempt (no lottery)0
Sponsors this role80
Entry-level history0
PERM / green-card track0
Lottery odds40
Fits your clock70

Thin sponsorship signal and lottery-bound. A low-probability bet with your clock running. Prioritize cap-exempt roles and proven entry-level sponsors first.

Lottery odds assume a STEM candidate.

Personalize to your clock →

Community outcomes

No reports yet — be the first to help the next applicant.

About the role

  • Ways of working - A problem-solving mindset, with the ability to work independently and collaboratively. - Excellent communication skills, capable of articulating technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • A dynamic work environment that fosters creativity and innovation.

Responsibilities

  • Design and optimize non-imaging concentrating optics - Fresnel primaries and secondary optical elements - to maximize flux transfer, uniformity, and intercept factor rather than image quality.
  • Build an optical error budget that rolls slope error, tracking error, and alignment tolerances into an intercept-factor model, and validate it against hardware.
  • Design for uniform irradiance on the receiver, mitigating hot spots and the material stress that uneven flux drives on a thermal absorber.
  • Design, automate, and optimize optical test setups for our concentrators and complex opto-mechanical assemblies, ensuring efficiency and precision.
  • Characterize concentration ratio, acceptance angle, focal-spot flux distribution, and end-to-end optical efficiency, and validate these against Monte Carlo ray-tracing models.
  • Characterize soiling, UV degradation, and abrasion on polymer optics, and evaluate anti-reflective and anti-soiling coatings to support a 30-year field lifespan.
  • Define and validate manufacturing tolerances for optical components produced at high volume in domestic factory settings.
  • Collaborate with optical, mechanical, electrical, thermal, and systems engineering teams to ensure alignment across product development stages.
  • Maintain clear, organized technical documentation for internal teams and external stakeholders.
  • Core non-imaging design competencies

Requirements

  • Hands-on experience with optical systems in a lab environment, including assembly, alignment, integration, and testing.
  • Concentrator design experience with Fresnel lenses (ideally molded PMMA or silicone-on-glass), compound parabolic concentrators (CPCs), parabolic troughs, heliostats, or secondary optical elements (SOEs).
  • Proficiency with Monte Carlo ray-tracing tools built for illumination/flux work - TracePro, LightTools, FRED, Photopia, or CSP-specific codes such as SolTrace or Tonatiuh.

Nice to have

  • Exowatt is revolutionizing the energy landscape for the AI era with our groundbreaking P3 system that captures solar energy, stores it as heat, and generates electricity on demand.
  • Non-imaging concentrating optics experience is required for this role.
  • If hired for this role, relocation to one of these sites is required.
  • We provide relocation assistance.

Compensation

  • Feed validated optical performance into annual optical-efficiency models, thermal models, and the system digital twin (developed with NVIDIA and AWS).
  • Familiarity with sun-shape and DNI modeling, circumsolar ratio, cosine losses, and annual optical-efficiency simulation (often paired with SAM or similar performance models).

Benefits

  • Competitive salary and equity options.
  • Comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and retirement plans.
  • Education & foundation

Company info

  • Founded in 2023 and backed by leading investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sam Altman, and Felicis, we're committed to providing clean, modular, and scalable power that meets the rapidly growing demands of AI infrastructure.
  • Our mission is to make sustainable renewable energy always available and almost free, enabling technological advancement while protecting our planet.
  • What We Offer: Competitive salary and equity options.
  • What We Offer:
Apply directly at Exowatt →Create a free account for alerts like thisView Exowatt immigration profile

This listing is sourced directly from Exowatt's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.