The posting
Founder’s Associate (Reports to CEO)
About Ulysses
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.
The Role
You’ll work directly with our co-founder and CEO, Akhil, to amplify his capabilities. You’ll work with him and our sales team to fill the pipeline, advance deals, and make sure nothing slips. This means outbound prospecting, call prep, proposal writing, pipeline management, and whatever else needs doing to close business. You’ll sit across defense and commercial — some weeks you’re sourcing Navy contacts, other weeks you’re building a pitch for an offshore survey company. This isn’t a rotational program or a learning experience — it’s a front-line sales role where you own real work from day one.
What You’ll Do
• Run outbound. Source and land meetings with people who don’t normally take cold outreach — Navy program managers, offshore survey directors, subsea cable operators, oil majors. Build sequences, test angles, find the door and get through it. You’ll be measured on meetings booked with qualified prospects.
• Prep for meetings. Before Akhil gets on the phone, you’ve built the brief: who they are, what they care about, what we’ve talked about before, and what the ask is. You’ll sit in on calls, take notes, and own the follow-up.
• Build proposals, capability briefs, one-pagers, and customer materials that move deals forward. Not decks that sit in a folder — collateral that actually closes. You should be able to take a messy call debrief and turn it into a sharp proposal in 24 hours.
• Own the CRM and pipeline. Know where every deal stands, what’s stalled, what needs a push. Run the weekly pipeline review. Flag deals that are going cold before anyone asks. Nothing falls through the cracks.
• Research new verticals, map buying committees, and figure out where we should be playing next. When we say “we want to get into offshore wind,” you come back with the top 20 buyers, the budget cycle, and a draft outreach plan — not a question.
• Support demo logistics, conference prep, and field operations. When we’re deploying robots in the ocean for a customer demo, you’re helping coordinate people, travel, and follow-up. When we’re at a trade show, you’re working the booth and booking meetings on-site.
• Draft outreach sequences, follow-up emails, and re-engagement campaigns for prospects who’ve gone quiet. You’ll write more than you expect in this role, and it needs to be sharp. Every email is the brand.
Who You Are
• Commercial instinct. You’ve been inside a real sales function, or a startup, and you know what good looks like. You understand pipeline stages, qualification, conversion math, and why follow-up matters more than first touch. You don’t need to be taught how a deal moves — you’ve seen it.
• Resourceful. You have a track record of getting access you didn’t deserve. Cold emails that landed. Meetings that shouldn’t have happened. You don’t wait for permission.
• Scrappy. You’ve made money on your own at least once. Door-to-door. Reselling. Some scheme your parents still don’t understand. The context matters less than the instinct.
• Sharp. You break messy problems into pieces and find the lever that matters. You can take a vague directive like “figure out how we get into the offshore wind market” and come back with a target list and a plan, not a set of questions.
• Self-directed. You don’t need to be told what to do next. You see around the corner, understand what would be useful, and get it done before anyone asks. You manage up well — you know when to loop Akhil in and when to just handle it.
• Intense. You match the pace of the founders and you don’t clock-watch. When there’s a deal on the line or a demo to prep, you’re not thinking about what time it is. You hold yourself to a standard, not a schedule.
• Productive. You find points of leverage and build systems — including your own tools — to get things done. Boring work gets automated; important work gets your full attention.
• Organised. Things move fast at Ulysses. You will be juggling a lot. You need to have systems in place so you don’t drop things.
• Creative. You think independently about problems and find solutions others haven’t seen.
• Ambitious. Unreasonably so. You want to build or run something massive, and you’re serious about it. This role is a launchpad, not a line on a resume.
This Role Is Not For You If
You need clear structure, defined processes, and a manager who checks in daily. We’re 15 people — there is no playbook. You’ll build it. If ambiguity makes you anxious instead of excited, this isn’t the right fit. If you want a predictable 9-to-5, this probably isn’t either.
Experience
• 0–3 years in sales, consulting, investment banking, or another fast-paced working environment.
• Bonus: prior experience on a high-functioning sales team. Not required if everything else is there, but it shortens the ramp.
• Bonus: military background (any branch). You’ll be talking to the Navy, and speaking their language helps.
• Bonus: you’ve worked at a company with fewer than 30 people and thrived in the chaos.
• Bonus: you’ve built your own tools. Scripts, dashboards, internal apps — whatever turned manual work into leverage. We haven’t invested here yet and think there’s real upside in someone who codes their own way out of grunt work.
What You Get
• Work directly with a co-founder who’s closed millions in deals and is building one of the most important companies in ocean technology. You’ll learn more about selling in six months here than in two years anywhere else.
• Meaningful equity in a company at an inflection point. We’ve done millions in revenue, we’re well-funded, and the market is going vertical.
• A front-row seat to defense tech and maritime autonomy.
• A real path to growth. If you’re good, you’ll own a vertical, a territory, or a function here fast. We promote from within, and we move quickly.
• A team that works hard, moves fast, and doesn’t do politics. Fifteen people in a room in San Francisco building robots that go in the ocean. It’s exactly as cool as it sounds.
