The posting
Ulysses is building the autonomy platform for the ocean with mass-deployable, fully autonomous surface and subsea robots with dual-domain, read-and-write capabilities. Our oceans are in trouble; we’ve neglected them, and we allow bad actors to misuse them. Ulysses will manage our oceans effectively, persistently, and cheaply. We're developing autonomous surface and subsea drones, robotics, and AI systems to tackle critical challenges across nature, infrastructure, and maritime security. Our first product line is a suite of autonomous drones and attachments that makes restoring seagrass ecosystems cheaper and easier. We are currently working with governments in the US and Australia and leading environmental groups like The Nature Conservancy. We are a Series A company backed by top VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
About the Role
We're hiring an IT Manager to build and own the systems that keep Ulysses working securely as we grow. You'll take responsibility for company IT, from laptops, accounts and everyday support to networks, data protection and security operations across our engineering, manufacturing and operations teams.
We need someone who has personally built an IT environment from scratch and lived with the decisions as the company scaled. You'll assess what we have, decide what needs to change, and do the work: select tools, configure systems, automate routine tasks and help people use them. You'll work closely with engineering and operations to protect our technology and customer data while keeping the team productive.
What You’ll Do
- Build a practical IT roadmap and maintain an accurate inventory of devices, accounts, applications, critical data and external-facing services, with clear ownership.
- Own identity and access: single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, administrator privileges, access reviews, and reliable onboarding and offboarding for employees and contractors.
- Deploy and operate device management, encryption, endpoint protection and patching. Make laptops and engineering workstations straightforward to provision, support, recover and retire.
- Establish clear boundaries between company and personal devices and data. Work with operations and legal advisers on acceptable-use policies, monitoring scope, employee consent and practical security training.
- Build reliable office, workshop and lab networks, secure remote access and appropriate separation between corporate, guest and equipment networks. Support connectivity for teams working in the field.
- Protect engineering and customer information through access controls, secure sharing, backups and tested recovery. Work with engineering to define and implement boundaries for controlled data.
- Establish useful security logging, monitoring, vulnerability management and incident-response procedures. Investigate alerts, coordinate specialist support and follow fixes through to verification.
- Own Ulysses’s technical relationships with the NSA Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, FBI TACU and DHS/CISA. Coordinate threat-intelligence sharing, onboard approved cybersecurity services, and turn assessments and alerts into practical security improvements.
- Maintain system documentation, a system security plan and evidence of implemented controls. Work with operations and specialist advisers to support applicable customer and defence cybersecurity requirements.
- Own day-to-day IT support, hardware procurement, software administration and vendor costs. Automate repeatable work and document recovery procedures so the company can operate without depending on one person.
About you
Requirements
- You have personally built and operated an IT environment from scratch or taken an early, fragmented setup into a reliable company-wide system. You can explain what you implemented, the trade-offs you made and how it held up as the business grew.
- Strong hands-on experience with identity and access management, endpoint management, networking, and cloud-based business applications, including email and collaboration tools.
- Practical experience securing devices and accounts, managing vulnerabilities, configuring logs and alerts, and testing backup and recovery. You can troubleshoot problems across these systems yourself.
- Ability to automate administration with scripts, APIs and integrations, and make onboarding, access changes and device setup repeatable.
- Good judgment about security, usability and cost. You can prioritize the most important risks, choose proportionate controls and bring in specialist help when needed.
- Clear communication and a service mindset. You're comfortable helping an individual colleague, explaining a technical decision to leadership and writing instructions others can follow.
- Willingness to work on-site in San Francisco alongside the people building and operating our hardware.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience as an early IT hire at a growing startup, particularly in robotics, hardware, manufacturing or defence.
- Experience implementing NIST SP 800-171 controls, preparing for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), or building systems that handle controlled unclassified information.
- Experience with managed security providers, government cybersecurity support programmes, threat-intelligence sharing or coordinating penetration tests and remediation.
- Experience supporting a mix of macOS, Windows and Linux, engineering software and developer workflows.
Think you're our next teammate? Tell us about an IT environment you built from scratch: what you started with, what you personally put in place, and what you changed as the company grew.
