Subsea Acoustic Systems Engineer

Ulysses; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Ulysses in San Francisco is seeking an Acoustics Engineer to advance low-cost underwater sensing. You will own core acoustic payloads (DVL, MBES, Side Scan, USBL) and drive designs from concept to production for global deployment.

This hands-on role spans physics, signal processing, electronics, embedded software, and production testing. You will collaborate with robotics, autonomy, and manufacturing teams to ensure lab performance translates to ocean reliability at scale.

Qualifications

• Strong fundamentals in underwater acoustics / sonar / signal processing.
• Proven ability to develop working systems, not just theoretical ones.
• Experience shipping acoustic products—ideally in DVL, MBES, Side Scan, USBL or related sonar systems.
• Solid DSP + estimation skills (time/frequency domain analysis, filtering, detection, beamforming, Doppler).
• Strong implementation ability in Python for R&D, and C/C++ for embedded/real-time deployment.
• Hands-on testing: designing experiments, building rigs, field trials, debugging from raw waveforms to system behavior.

Responsibilities

• Own acoustic product development elements end-to-end: architect system elements, prototype quickly, validate performance, and drive designs into production.
• Develop signal processing + estimation pipelines: waveform design, matched filtering, Doppler estimation, beamforming, and sensor fusion interfaces.
• Build the hardware/software stack: transducer design tradeoffs, analog front-end, timing, firmware/drivers, logging/observability.
• Scale to production: cost-down iterations, DFx, supplier selection, manufacturing documentation, calibration procedures, automated test fixtures.
• Test in the real world: tank/bench characterization, environmental testing, field deployments, sea trials.

Skills

Underwater acoustics

Signal processing

Python

C/C++

DSP

Autonomous systems

Job description

Ulysses in San Francisco is seeking an Acoustics Engineer to advance low-cost underwater sensing. You will own core acoustic payloads (DVL, MBES, Side Scan, USBL) and drive designs from concept to production for global deployment.

This hands-on role spans physics, signal processing, electronics, embedded software, and production testing. You will collaborate with robotics, autonomy, and manufacturing teams to ensure lab performance translates to ocean reliability at scale.