The posting
About us
Ulysses is the ocean company. We design, manufacture, and operate autonomous vehicles for surface and subsea operations — taking on the most critical tasks across defense, commercial, and scientific missions. Our vertically integrated platform includes Mako, a modular AUV with 72-hour endurance and more onboard compute than any vehicle in its class; Leviathan, an autonomous surface vessel mothership; and Kraken, our automated launch-and-recovery system that closes the loop between surface and subsea with zero human intervention.
The ocean covers 71% of the Earth's surface and drives a $2.6 trillion global economy, yet it remains the least monitored domain on the planet. We're changing that — building autonomous systems that collapse the cost of ocean operations by orders of magnitude so that persistent coverage becomes the baseline, not the exception. We operate globally today across defense, ocean science, and commercial survey, working with partners including the U.S. Navy, the Government of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy.
Founded in 2023 and headquartered in San Francisco, Ulysses has raised $48 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Booz Allen Ventures, Harpoon Ventures, Pebblebed, Lowercarbon Capital, and others. Our team is lean, hands-on, and fast — we prototype in the shop, test on the water, and ship. If you want to work at the frontier, there's no frontier bigger than the ocean.
About the Role
We’re hiring an Electrical Engineer to join our already exceptional EE team to play a critical part in designing, prototyping, and bringing to production the embedded electronics that power our autonomous surface and subsea robots. You’ll own boards and subsystems end-to-end—from first schematics to field-tested hardware to production releases—working closely with mechanical, robotics, and software teams to ship complete, reliable systems.
This role is for someone who moves fast, builds real hardware, and has strong fundamentals in embedded systems, power, sensing, and ruggedization. You’ll be expected to deliver boards that are manufacturable, testable, serviceable, and robust in harsh marine environments.
What You’ll Do
- Embedded electronics, end-to-end: architect and design embedded systems for robotic platforms, including sensing, compute, comms, and power distribution
- Rapid prototyping to production PCBs: take designs from breadboards to polished PCBs ready for vehicle integration. Collaborate with the mechanical and mechatronics teams to ensure smooth integration of electronics with mechanical systems.
- Firmware + bring-up: write/modify embedded firmware for board bring-up, sensor integration, control loops, diagnostics, and fault handling; collaborate closely with software to define interfaces and telemetry
- Power systems: design and validate power trees (DC/DC, protection, inrush, switching noise management), battery integration, charging paths, and power monitoring
- System integration: integrate sensors, comms modules, and actuators across protocols (UART/CAN/USB/Ethernet), and make them behave reliably together in the real world
- Validation and field reliability: create test plans, run environmental and stress testing, debug intermittent failures, and drive reliability improvements based on field data
- Design for scale: DFM/DFT, component selection, cost-down revisions, supplier coordination, and building production test fixtures and automated end-of-line tests
- Documentation and ownership: maintain schematics, layouts, BOMs, test procedures, calibration/bring-up guides, and clear handoffs to manufacturing
About you
Requirements
- You have hands-on hardware experience, you’ve built something cool that you can show us.
- Experience shipping embedded electronics in real environments, outside of labs and homes.
- Proven ability to bring embedded systems from concept to prototype to production, including schematic capture, layout collaboration/ownership, bring-up, and iteration
- Strong understanding of analogue electronics - amplifiers, opamp circuits, power converters.
- Proficiency in high-speed PCB design and related testing - signal integrity design requirements.
- Circuit analysis: proficient with simulation of circuits in SPICE and python.
- PCB rework: experience soldering small electronics (0402 size or smaller)
- Strong embedded fundamentals: microcontrollers (e.g., STM32, Teensy, ESP, or similar), C/C++, debugging with scopes/logic analyzers, and hardware/software interface discipline
- ECAD proficiency (KiCad, Altium or similar) and ability to produce clean, reviewable designs quickly
- Comfortable integrating mixed-protocol systems (UART/CAN/USB/Ethernet) and handling real-world issues (grounding, noise, EMI, timing, brownouts, ESD)
- Strong debugging instincts: you can isolate failures systematically and get to the root cause fast (hardware, firmware, system-level interactions)
- Ability to collaborate across mechanical and software: connector selection, harnessing, packaging, sealing constraints, manufacturing/assembly realities
- You have a track record of strong problem-solving skills and a demonstrated ability to work independently in dynamic environments.
Nice-to-haves
- Marine/fielded robotics electronics experience (corrosion, condensation, vibration/shock, pressure-adjacent constraints, waterproof connectors, sealing strategies)
- Power systems experience: higher-current distribution, battery packs, BMS integration, chargers, motor power, and safety/protection design
- Experience with production test automation and fixture design (bed-of-nails, boundary scan strategies, calibration flows, logging/traceability)
- Experience with ultrasonics / acoustics hardware, analog front-ends, or DSP-adjacent systems
- Experience with EMC/EMI pre-compliance testing and design mitigation strategies
Think you're our next teammate? Apply and send examples of hardware you’ve shipped or owned—tell us what you designed, how you debugged it, what failed in the field, and how you made it reliable.
