optical engineer

Optical engineers design and develop different industrial applications with optics. They have knowledge of light, light transmission principles, and optics in order to design engineering specs of equipment such as microscopes, lenses, telescopes, and other optical devices.

The most in-demand skills for this role include optical equipment standards, optical glass characteristics, engineering principles, optics, types of optical instruments, design drawings. These are the skills O*NET identifies as most important for competent performance.

Our AI-durability model gives optical engineer a score of 0.50 on a 0-1 scale (higher = more exposure). That places it at moderate AI exposure — some tasks are being automated but the role adapts. Learning to work with AI tools rather than against them is the path forward.