Optical Coating Engineer

Job title: Optical Coating Engineer

About the Role As a member of the Advanced Optics Division Engineering Optical Thin Film Coating group, you will define and develop optical thin film coatings and manufacturing processes that build on Corning’s existing knowledge base to move products into coating production. This is a hands-on engineering/manufacturing role working in collaboration with the Division Engineering Optical Design, Mechanical Design, and System Test teams, as well as the Development Engineering, Plant Engineering, and Program Management teams.

What You'll Do

• Design robust, cost-effective coating production processes using existing methods that meet customer specifications.
• Specify cleaning, material handling, storage procedures, and metrology methods to characterize coating performance within the coating process flow.
• Manage coating designs and process recipe portfolio.
• Transfer knowledge of new coating designs, processes, and product characteristics into manufacturing.
• Provide training as needed, create coating recipes, work instructions, process sheets, and define measurement requirements for new products.
• Interface with Development and Optical Design teams to understand new coating fundamentals and processing requirements.
• Comprehension of coating properties impact to system-level performance; analyze technical trade-offs and risks.
• Utilize in-house developed software to model system-level coating performance; transmission uniformity, polarization and retardance characteristics, coating thickness variation, and perform tolerancing studies and Monte Carlo simulations.
• Engage with Mechanical Design team to design and fabricate prototype and production optical element tooling, customized coating chamber hardware, and metrology tools.
• Provide engineering support to Division Engineering Technicians; define test activities, process set-up, hardware evaluation, measurements, and analysis of results.
• Assist Program Management to estimate costs, labor hours, and manage overall coating aspects of projects.
• Provide input for process and product transfer tollgates.
• Participate in weekly project meetings; customer and design review meetings; experienced working directly with customers.
• Support System Test team with customized coatings for test benches and other metrology applications.
• Utilize Design for Manufacturing principles to determine optimal solutions.

What We're Looking For

• Hands-on engineering/manufacturing experience in optical thin film coatings and coating production.
• Ability to translate coating designs and requirements into manufacturing processes and documentation (recipes, work instructions, process sheets).
• Strong knowledge of coating performance modeling, including transmission uniformity, polarization, retardance, thickness variation, and tolerancing; experience with Monte Carlo simulations.
• Proficiency with in-house software tools for system-level coating performance modeling.
• Experience designing and fabricating prototype and production optical element tooling, coating chamber hardware, and metrology tools.
• Ability to collaborate across multiple teams (Optical Design, Mechanical Design, System Test, Development, Plant Engineering, Program Management) and communicate with customers.
• Experience with Design for Manufacturing principles.

Nice to Have

• Experience with advanced coating simulation and tolerance analysis beyond basic requirements.
• Prior exposure to cost estimation and project management support for coating programs.
• Strong written and oral communication skills for customer interactions.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary not disclosed. Benefits and perks not specified in the posting.