Embedded System Lead Engineer

Pelagon; France; Sur place; EUR 110 000 - 140 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

Pelagon seeks an experienced Embedded System Lead Engineer to own end-to-end hardware, electronics and the embedded stack across autonomous maritime platforms, both surface and submerged. You will design the compute-and-power architecture enabling on-device AI with strict energy budgets and rugged reliability.

The role combines hardware, firmware, sensor integration, and real-time control with hands-on field work, bringing platforms from prototype to fielded units on tight schedules.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building real, shipping hardware that is efficient, robust and field-ready.
• Direct experience building drones or autonomous systems (marine autonomy space welcomed).
• Deep hands-on command of the full embedded stack: electronics, power, motor control, sensors, microcontrollers and firmware.

Responsabilités

• Own the hardware, electronics and embedded stack across autonomous maritime platforms.
• Design the edge-AI compute platform and select accelerators to maximize inference per watt.
• Oversee electronics design, power distribution, battery systems and sensor interfaces.
• Lead embedded software and autopilot stack development, with low-level firmware integration.
• Perform bring-up, sea trials, and field debugging to ensure reliability at sea.

Connaissances

Shipping hardware

Drones / Autonomous systems

Embedded stack full

Autopilot ecosystems

Edge AI & Inference

Outils

Pixhawk ecosystem

ArduPilot / PX4

Embedded Linux

Description du poste

As Embedded System Lead Engineer, you take end-to-end technical ownership of the hardware, electronics, and embedded stack across a small family of autonomous maritime platforms — some operating on the surface, some beneath it.

What they share matters more than what sets them apart: each must persist at sea for long stretches, sense its surroundings, run our AI on-device, and report back intelligently — all while surviving a brutal environment on a very tight energy budget.

These platforms exist to carry one thing into the water: our AI. Pelagon trains high-performance detection models in-house, and those models have to run on-device, at the edge, on a razor-thin power budget. Designing the compute-and-power architecture that makes this possible is the heart of the role.

The mandate is simple and uncompromising: get reliable hardware in the water fast, and start collecting data. Every week of persistent at-sea operation compounds.

• Common system architecture across the platforms: power, sensing, compute, and communications.
• The edge-AI compute platform — selecting and integrating the processors and accelerators that run our in-house detection models on-device, extracting maximum inference from every milliwatt.
• Electronics design and integration — power distribution, battery systems, motor/thruster control, sensor interfaces (acoustic, pressure, IMU, GNSS, AIS).
• The embedded software and autopilot stack, firmware, and the low-level glue that makes autonomy reliable in a wet, salty environment.
• Robustness and efficiency engineering: watertight integrity, power budgets, endurance, thermal behaviour, EMC, and graceful failure modes far from shore.
• Hands-on bring-up and sea trials — you'll be on the dock and on the boat, not just at the bench.
• Vendor and component decisions, and the build-up of our test and manufacturing practices as we scale from prototype to fielded units.

The hard problems you'll solve

• Persistence with a finite power budget: squeezing weeks of useful operation out of a sealed, ship-deployable platform.
• Reliability with no one to fix it: a system at sea has to fail safe and recover on its own — there's no technician 30 nm offshore in a 2 m swell.
• Running real AI at the edge, on almost no power: real-time inference on-device, then sensing, sleeping, and waking intelligently to stretch endurance from hours into weeks.
• Sensing in a hostile medium: pressure, corrosion, biofouling, acoustic noise, intermittent comms — the hardware has to keep computing through all of it.
• Speed without fragility: moving fast toward sea trials, while building things that survive the ocean.

Who we're looking for

You're a sharp, senior builder who wants to own a problem, not be handed a ticket.

• 5+ years building real, shipping hardware — embedded systems that had to be efficient, robust, and survive the real world.
• Direct experience building drones or autonomous systems (drone companies, automotive / autonomous vehicles, or the marine autonomy space).
• Deep, hands-on command of the full embedded stack: electronics design, power systems, motor/actuator control, sensor integration, microcontrollers and embedded Linux, and firmware close to the metal.
• Comfort with autopilot / flight-controller ecosystems (Pixhawk, ArduPilot / ArduSub / PX4 or equivalent) and the realities of real-time control.
• Experience deploying AI/ML models at the edge — embedded inference, accelerators (GPU / NPU / TPU-class), model quantization, and the power-versus-performance tradeoffs that come with it.
• A bias toward action: you prototype, test, break, and iterate, and you're energized by tight deadlines and a mission that genuinely matters.

Bonus points for mechanical / mechatronic breadth (hulls, sealing, and thrust as well as circuits), subsea or marine hardware experience, comms in degraded environments, CFD or hydrodynamics intuition, or having taken a hardware product from zero to fielded at scale.

• Founding ownership: you'll be one of the first engineers and will define the technical foundation of the company. Meaningful equity comes with that.
• A mission with weight: hardware that protects critical infrastructure and Europe's maritime space.
• Real things, in the real ocean, fast: you'll see your work in the water within weeks, not years.
• AI-first, at the edge: we train our own models and run them where it counts — in the water, on the device.
• A sovereign European deeptech at the inflection point of a market with strong NATO and EU policy momentum behind it.

Why join now

• Founding ownership: you'll be one of the first engineers and will define the technical foundation of the company. Meaningful equity comes with that.
• A mission with weight: hardware that protects critical infrastructure and Europe's maritime space.
• Real things, in the real ocean, fast: you'll see your work in the water within weeks, not years.
• AI-first, at the edge: we train our own models and run them where it counts — in the water, on the device.
• A sovereign European deeptech at the inflection point of a market with strong NATO and EU policy momentum behind it.