The posting
Role: Senior Electronics Engineer
Location: San Diego, CA (in-office)
Salary: $150,000 - $200,000 / yr + stock options, 401k matching, relocation assistance within the U.S. (if applicable), and other benefits
Role Overview:
Seasats operates a growing fleet of unmanned surface vehicles around the world, and we’re rapidly scaling production and deployment. We’re hiring an experienced Senior Electronics Engineer to own and ship reliable hardware across power, communications, and payload systems.
You’ll work closely with engineering and production teams to deliver systems that operate in demanding and remote environments for long durations. The systems you build are difficult to access once deployed, so reliability and judgment matter. This role will require balancing speed, reliability, and manufacturability while taking responsibility for pragmatic tradeoffs.
Role Details:
This role spans electronic hardware design, battery systems, communications, and power architecture. You’ll take systems from concept through deployment, with a focus on hardware that works reliably outside controlled environments.
Work is iterative and fast-paced – you’ll prioritize high-risk areas early, make progress with incomplete information, and revisit or discard designs as needed to stay on track.
You will:
- Own system-level electrical design and architectural decisions, making hard tradeoffs between power, thermal, reliability, and manufacturability under real-world constraints
- Lead schematic capture and PCB layout from prototype through bring-up, debug, and production, working closely with external manufacturers to get hardware built and working in practice, not just in design
- Debug hardware at the bench and in the field, tracking down root causes across electrical, firmware, and mechanical systems when things don’t behave as expected
- Collaborate with firmware, software, testing, and manufacturing teams to identify issues early and improve system reliability before and after deployment
- Design and review power architectures for battery-powered systems, including regulation, distribution, and protection for systems that operate in harsh, long-duration environments
- Analyze field failures and test data to understand what broke and why, and feed those learnings back into the next iteration
- Lead design reviews, mentor junior engineers, and help raise the bar on how we design, review, and ship electronics as a team
About You:
- BS in Electrical Engineering or equivalent experience with 5+ years of hands-on designing and shipping hardware in a fast-paced environment
- Strong fundamentals in electrical system design, including power distribution, battery management, and control systems
- Experience taking PCB designs from schematic and layout (we use Altium Designer) through bring-up, debug, and production (50+ units)
- Experience building and integrating real-world electromechanical systems (motors, drives, sensors, compute, and networking)
- Experience with embedded platforms (MCUs, Jetson, etc.) and common interfaces (CAN, I2C, SPI, Ethernet, USB)
- Hands-on debugging across electrical, firmware, and system-level issues, with familiarity in C/C++, Python, or similar for testing and automation
- Comfort leading design reviews and operating in a small, high-ownership, in-office team
- Ability to obtain a security clearance
Due to export control requirements applicable to this position, we are only able to consider U.S. persons, as defined by U.S. export control laws. This includes U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and individuals granted asylee or refugee status.
In addition, it’s nice (though not essential) for you to have:
- Experience with autonomous vehicles
- Proficiency in Altium Designer
- Maritime background from extensive work and/or play on and around the ocean
This is an excellent opportunity to do high impact work, see your hardware 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.
About Seasats:
At Seasats, we're passionate about delivering maritime robotics solutions to redefine the maritime industry. Our primary products are unmanned surface vessels (USVs), designed to carry sensors at sea for months at a time. Our USVs provide persistent monitoring and data acquisition to defense, scientific, and commercial customers, and have autonomously crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. After thousands of years in which the only way to gather information from the ocean was to put people on a boat, these uncrewed vessels are transforming how humanity monitors and interacts with the ocean. Here, you’ll find the space and opportunity to do your life’s best work.
Along with your salary, you’ll receive perks including:
- Stock options
- Competitive insurance (including a 99% employer-covered Gold HMO plan or other options)
- 401k matching up to 4% of salary
- Four free lunches per week
- An employee activity fund
- A pet-friendly office
- Unlimited/Flex PTO
Hiring Notes:
When applying, you’ll be asked to provide a resume and answer a few screening questions.
Please note that we are currently unable to sponsor employment visas, so candidates must be independently authorized to work in the United States.
We appreciate diverse perspectives and life experiences, and we’re committed to building a team that reflects a wide range of backgrounds. Seasats provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination of any type based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or local law.
We look forward to reviewing your application!
