Aquatic Intelligence Embedded Systems Engineer Cambridge, MA · Remote · Full time

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About Aquatic: 

Aquatic's mission is to reveal the invisible throughout the world's waters. By giving global blue industries, governments, and NGOs unprecedented situational awareness, we help decrease risk, increase efficiency, and align incentives with global climate stewardship. 

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Aquatic Intelligence is bringing together cutting-edge ocean engineering, agile development methods, and proven technology from adjacent industries to create a new generation of massively-deployable tools for pervasive, persistent, real-time sensing.  From water quality monitoring to genomic surveillance, Aquatic makes the oceans transparent and redefines what is possible to know underwater.

Job Description:

Aquatic is seeking a highly motivated and technically sophisticated Senior Embedded System Engineer. This engineer will play a central role in the design and development of our core technology stack, focusing largely on embedded systems integrating sensors (chemical, physical, biological), data logging, compute, communication, and routing layers. They will also play a key role in the design of abstraction layers and specified interfaces that will have industry-scale impact through Aquatic and a network of industrial and non-profit partners. The work will require expertise and implementation of electronic designs (including everything from embedded FPGA/MCU/SOC-based systems to analog front ends for sensor development) and associated firmware and software development.  The position may involve field deployments / expeditions to support data collection and testing, as well as post-processing and analysis.

The internal working title for this position is Senior Engineer, but the final level of the position will be determined by the selected candidate’s level of experience, expertise, and ambition.  Our highly collaborative team will have its home base in the Cambridge, MA area; we are open to remote candidates with periodic travel for in-person interaction and events.

Essential Functions

In this position you will imagine, design, prototype, iterate, and commercially deploy innovative embedded systems tackling some of the thorniest problems in the ocean.  This position requires a strong engineering background, meticulous work habits, strong interpersonal skills, curiosity, creativity, self-motivation and professionalism.  Specific responsibilities include (but are not limited to): 

• Leading the design, fabrication, testing, and deployment of major projects featuring novel embedded systems, with supervision consisting primarily of milestone progress reviews
• Incorporating and inventing new technologies — novel sensing methodologies, new approaches to energy harvesting, routing protocols, sampling methods involving complex mechanical, electrical, or electronic instrumentation, etc
• Playing a significant role in report writing and proposal preparation, patient applications, and publications
• Interacting with the entire Aquatic team to brainstorm new approaches to hard problems within and well beyond your specific expertise
• Will initially supervise one or more Engineers and/or Technical Assistants, and will actively grow their team according to Aquatic’s aggressive growth strategy.
• With little supervision, will work creatively and independently to establish objectives, meet deadlines, and complete difficult engineering assignments by demonstrating full competency in one or more engineering areas; assists substantively in planning technical aspects of experiments, as well as design, testing, and use of major system components.

Education & Experience

Educational requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science with at least five years of experience in embedded systems development
• Alternatively, a Ph.D. or Master's degree in electrical engineering or computer science with several years of related experience. 
• Candidates with a Bachelor's degree but with minimal experience in an unrelated field, or candidates without a formal engineering degree but with strong evidence of an established, specialized engineering skill gained through experience, may be considered for Engineer or Technical Assistant positions.
• All candidates must possess demonstrated excellence within a related field, i.e., a record of superior accomplishment-such as patents, publications, or documented instrumentation or systems

Skills and qualifications:

• Excellent electronic design skills, both analog and digital, including schematic-level design, simulation, circuit board layout, and troubleshooting. 
• Fluency in C / C++ / Python / and other high-level programming languages, including comfort in learning new languages as needed. tools
• Experience with FPGAs and fluency in VHDL and/or Verilog.
• Experience with designing, fabricating, programming, debugging, and deploying embedded systems.
• Experience with supply chain management and logistics related to hardware development and deployment.
• Adaptable to the dynamic environment of a startup.
• Share our core values and demonstrate a growth mindset.

Other skills that are desirable but not required include:

• Experience with precision sensing and analog-digital interfaces.
• Experience working with oceanographic systems.
• Experience with a wide array of operating system programming and administration.
• Experience with Autodesk family of design tools.
• Experience with data analysis.

Benefits

Aquatic provides a variety of benefits including medical, reproductive health, paid parental leave, unlimited PTO, flexible hours and (partial) remote working opportunities.  Aquatic is an equal opportunity employer.