Senior Research & Development Engineer - RDE

Location: San Francisco (In-person)

Omen is miniaturizing lab-grade spectroscopy into field-deployable embedded

sensors. Our systems deliver PPM-level trace analysis reports on the fluids in

industrial machines and datacenters, allowing us to detect complex wear trends

like bearing failures or coolant contamination in real-time. With this data we can

automatically match anomalies with failure modes weeks to months before

catastrophic failure occurs.

Our team is a tightly knit group of ~20 builders, dropouts, and industry veterans.

We don’t build things that are good enough, we build things that are 100x better.

We are currently developing two primary systems:

Omen Scout: for closed-loop hydraulic and lubricating oils.

Omen Sentry: for direct-to-chip liquid cooling loops (typ. water/glycol

mixtures).

While our early-stage prototypes have proven the core viability of our

spectroscopy techniques, we need an R&D Engineer to act as our primary

explorer. You will focus on the fundamental physics of our optical and fluidic

systems, proving out new sensing modalities and taking early concepts from

whiteboards to working benchtop prototypes.

Proof-of-Concept Development: Build and iterate early-stage benchtop

rigs to validate enhancements to our core tech (optics, fluid handling,

plasma generation) or explore new sensing modalities to add to our

portfolio (e.g., bio-sensing, turbidity, viscometry).

Push the Science: Identify the physical limits of our spectroscopy

techniques e.g. figure out exactly when and why an optical window fouls or

a plasma arc destabilizes in dirty fluids, and devising the fundamental

workarounds.

SoTA Scouting: Keep a constant pulse on the state-of-the-art in fluid

sensing, photonics, and physical chemistry.

Deep theoretical and practical knowledge in applied physics, optical

engineering, or physical chemistry.

Action biased i.e. prefers building a rough prototype to test a hypothesis

more often than not. Zero-to-One type individuals.

First-principles problem solving that relies on fundamental physics rather

than off-the-shelf reference designs.

Ability to use both ECAD and MCAD is a must. We use Altium and

Solidworks respectively.

Prior experience in other fields of spectroscopy is a plus

We take the physics seriously, but we don’t let red tape slow us down. If you want

to own a fascinating hardware problem from the ground up and build something

that protects the most expensive infrastructure on the planet, we want to talk to

you.