Datacolor, a global leader in color management solutions, provides software, instruments, and services to improve the precision, performance, and efficiency of your color workflow. For over five decades, Datacolor has earned our reputation as a trusted leader by delivering unmatched capabilities that rapidly address the full spectrum of color challenges in textile and apparel, paint, and coatings, automotive, plastics, photography and videography, and other industries.
To strengthen the system architecture capability of our Suzhou R&D Center, we are seeking a Systems Engineer with strong optical background to drive system-level integration of precision color measurement instruments..
Position Summary:
This role serves as a key technical role in strengthening local system capability, de-risking critical technical assumptions through applied research, and enabling successful transition from feasibility to production scale-up.
This role serves as a key technical role for driving system coherence, de-risking critical technical assumptions through applied research, and enabling successful transition from feasibility to production scale-up.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
In this role you will:
- Define system architecture, performance targets for spectrometer and color measurement instruments
- Translate product requirements into subsystem specifications across optics, electronics, mechanics, and firmware
- Own system-level technical execution to accelerate development progress
- Lead system trade-off analysis (performance, cost, manufacturability) and drive system-level risk identification and mitigation
- Conduct applied research, exploratory feasibility studies, and proof-of-concept investigations to validate critical technical assumptions and de-risk early-stage development challenges
- Design and optimize spectrometer optical subsystems, including illumination, gratings, filters, detectors, and opto-mechanical integration
- Perform optical simulation, tolerance analysis, noise and stray light evaluation to ensure system robustness
- Develop and execute system and optical validation strategies, including integration testing and production ramp readiness
- Support calibration strategy and system performance optimization at requirements and verification level
- Collaborate closely with Research, Hardware, Firmware, Operations to ensure successful product industrialization
- Support regulatory and compliance validation activities
- Document system decisions, specifications, technical trade-offs and validation results to maintain technical clarity
- Provide technical guidance to junior engineers when applicable
Experience & Qualification
You have:
- S. or M.S degree in Optical Engineering or related field
- Minimum 5+ years of experience in optical or precision instrument development
- Experience in system architecture definition and requirement decomposition
- Experience conducting exploratory development, feasibility studies, or proof-of-concept investigations
- Experience designing and integrating optical components, detectors, and light sources (spectrometer experience is a plus)
- Experience in system-level verification planning and execution
- Experience modeling theoretical optical system performance and validating through hands-on testing
- Experience supporting NPI and production transfer
- Strong documentation and cross-functional communication skills
- Experience with tools such as Zemax, MATLAB, Python, SolidWorks is a plus
- Strong analytical mindset with system-level thinking capability
Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently and in a team environment.