You design and bring up the boards under every optical component: driver electronics (laser drivers, EDFA pump drivers, TEC controllers), photodetector and sensor readout, control and interface boards, bench power, and harnessing. You may excel here if you've owned boards from schematic through layout, and bring-up and debug with a scope in hand is your comfort zone.
- Modem & High-Speed Mixed-Signal
You own the high-speed signal chain under the coherent transceiver: ADC/DAC interfaces, low-jitter clocking, multi-Gbaud modem boards, and the FPGA gateware carrying real-time DSP. You may excel here if you've shipped multi-GHz mixed-signal designs or gateware validated on real hardware, and signal integrity is second nature.
- Spaceflight / Payload Hardware
You take the payload's opto-electronic boards from bench-grade to space-qualified flight hardware: EEE parts selection, derating, radiation tolerance, and qualification campaigns through thermal-vac and vibration. You may excel here if you've built electronics that survived launch, vacuum, and radiation.
Not sure, or a strong generalist? If you move across board design, high-speed work, and flight hardware rather than living in one concentration, that's a seat too. You'll grow into the concentration that fits you best as the electronics team takes shape.