About Us:

Seasats is a small but rapidly growing company building autonomous boats for commercial, defense, and ocean science customers. The vehicles we build are strong and durable enough to carry sensors on multi-month ocean missions, but are also light enough to be handled by 1-2 people without cranes or heavy equipment.

The company is located in sunny San Diego, CA and is composed of talented engineers, builders, tinkerers, and business people. Internally, our shop work culture is hard working, but fun and quite flexible. Externally, we’ve built a reputation for being professional, knowledgeable, and dedicated to getting the job done. For more info, check out seasats.com.

Role: Senior Electronics Engineer

Salary Range: $100,000-$130,000 + stock options and benefits

Rather than making a highly specific job post asking for x years of experience, we’ve left this post and its salary range pretty broad. If you apply, we’ll see how you would fit into our organization and offer compensation accordingly. Minimal work/project experience will lead to an offer on the lower end; killer experience/credentials will put you on the higher end.

Key Traits/Skills

• You’ve been designing, building, debugging, and hacking electrical systems (PCBs, cable systems, sensors) for years.
• You’ve worked as part of a team.
• You’re able to work independently.
• You have a keen understanding of deadlines and time constraints.
• You’ve produced documentation for board assembly and to facilitate firmware development.
• You’ve designed an electrical system that has been produced in quantities of 50+ units.
• You have experience with Altium Designer.

The Details

This is an exciting opportunity to design PCBs and electrical systems for a scaling fleet of ocean robots. Seasats has several autonomous vehicles in customer hands across the globe, and the company is now in a position to 10x our vehicles’ production and deployment rates. We’re looking for an experienced electrical engineer who has a knack for getting projects done on time and in a highly reliable manner.

Development speed is one of our core focuses at Seasats, so a typical project might look like this:

• Rapidly understand the project's design goals and key constraints
• Quickly lay out the key building blocks and communicate them in design meetings.
• Identify the highest risk items and design / order / build those so that they can be de-risked as fast as possible. We aim to kick off those lead times and then carry on with parallel development so that if things go well we’re two to three steps ahead.
• Design and execute a test plan to find issues and demonstrate system functionality. Our systems can be exposed to a variety of conditions in the field, so selecting test parameters that address compound worst-case scenarios is an important part of the design and test processes.
• Communicate findings and document outcomes in a practical manner.
• Refine the design if needed.
• Hand off the system to the electronics production team.
• See the project through its early stages of QA/QC testing (run by the production and testing team) and ensure that any hiccups are addressed.

You'll report directly to our CTO, the designer/debugger/hacker behind most of our current systems. You'll work with other testing, R&D, and production teams, and eventually you'll lead improvements to our current systems and independently create next-generation designs. Some revisions and features will be glamorous and rewarding, while others will be time-consuming and low-visibility to most of the team, though still critical.

Our customers depend on our vehicles to complete high value (and at times dangerous) missions. The systems you’ll design and build provide the power, communications, and electrical backbone of these vehicles. Their reliability is critical, so you’ll need to independently balance a fast development pace with attention to detail and robust system design. You may also have to pause one project to take care of a higher priority every so often.

Specific tasks could include

• PCB design and revisions
• Communicating integration details to the firmware and software teams
• Interfacing with the electronics production and testing teams
• Assembling and debugging early boards
• Designing and building test cables and assemblies
• Balancing design goals with timelines and business considerations

This is an excellent opportunity to do high impact work, see your code go into live field robotics applications, and join a fun and hard working team on the cutting edge of ocean autonomy. Whether you’re a new grad or a 30 year industry vet, we expect an open-minded learning attitude from everyone at Seasats.

If you join, you’ll receive a competitive salary, health insurance, perks, stock options, and an important spot in a rapidly growing ocean tech company. We’re extremely committed to helping new team members succeed by ramping up with well-scoped projects and regularly taking the time to discuss where things are working and what needs to change. We’re also big on personal freedoms: if you’re on top of your responsibilities and want the afternoon off to surf, play with your dog, or do whatever you want to do, go for it! We have flexible hours, a flexible time off schedule, and a personable, kickass work culture. We want someone who’s stoked to contribute in and to this environment.

If you apply, we'll ask for the following:

• A resume.
• Confirmation that you’re in San Diego or willing to relocate here.
• 1-3 sentences on why this job excites you and how you heard about us.
• Description and/or picture of a multi-board PCB assembly you’ve designed.
• The greatest quantity that one of your parts has been produced in.
• A photo of your home workbench, if you have one.
• If you had to move faster on a PCB design, what are the first two things you would do or steps you would cut?
• Possible start date (or range).

We appreciate diverse perspectives and life experiences and so encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. Note, however, that we are currently unable to sponsor employment visas, so candidates must be independently authorized to work in the United States.

We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Thanks for checking us out!