Optical Engineer or Scientist: Designs and builds systems that combine photonic, electronic, mechanical and thermal components plus software improvements to build tools for a specific application. Example: Increases the throughput of a cell imaging microscope, called a flow cytometer, through hardware integration and improvement of the image analysis code that does the counting. Flow cytometers are used heavily in clinical research of pharmaceutical solutions such as cancer treatment.

Laser Engineer or Scientist: Designs, prototypes, analyzes and optimizes laser systems. Example: Quantifies and qualifies the beam quality of a 20 Watt ultraviolet nanosecond pulsed laser after the addition of a prototype component is introduced. The goal is to confirm the element can better withstand the extreme conditions of the laser system which is used in eye surgery.

Application Engineer: Optimizes a specific optical instrument, such as a laser cutter, for different applications. Example: Use Design of Experiments and the knowledge of laser matter interactions to optimize a recipe for cutting thin layers of copper in a fiberglass substrate (PCB) to make smaller interconnects for the microelectronics industry.

Research and Development Scientist: Researches and develops technology that require the application of optical phenomena. Example: Design, prototype and test a specific laser, collection and detector array combination which can be attach to an autonomous flying drone to map out a specific agricultural commodity, such as almonds, for strategic agriculture.

Optical Metrologist: Measures and characterizes the properties of materials and environments using light as the primary measurement tool. Example: Utilizes a state-of-the-art instrument to measure 3D surfaces with sub-angstrom resolution for high tech manufacturing quality assurance.

Vision Systems Engineer and Scientist: Uses computational and photonic tools to create systems that can remotely sense the environment. Example: Integrates new laser and detector combinations to improve the speed and spatial resolution of LiDAR imaging system for autonomous vehicles.