Ocean robots that stay at sea for months
Online Oceans builds Scout, a 2.4 m solar-electric robot boat that collects ocean data for months at a time. No ship. No crew. One person launches it from a beach. Tether, our web platform, runs the fleet from any browser.
Survey companies, instrument makers and research programmes use Scout to watch the sea, listen for vessels and marine mammals, and measure waves and weather. We are a small, venture-backed team in Southampton, growing fast.
The job
Scout runs on our own boards: the embedded computing and navigation boards, the power and solar charging system, and the sensor bay that powers and connects customer instruments. You will design them in KiCad, take them through to production with our assembly partners and test them at sea. Scout is a 2.4 m solar-electric boat that holds station for months, so the power your boards draw has a direct effect on how long it can stay out. It also carries hydrophones that listen for underwater vehicles and marine mammals, and a noisy supply or a poor ground shows up in that data. You will own these trade-offs and see the results on the water.
What you will do
- Design schematics and layouts in KiCad, from first sketch to production release.
- Design efficient DC-DC, battery and solar charging circuits for a boat that recharges itself at sea.
- Plan grounding, power and signal routing so IMUs, compasses, radios and hydrophones work cleanly side by side.
- Develop the sensor bay electronics that give customer instruments regulated 24 V power and an Ethernet connection.
- Bring up, test and debug new boards, and build the test jigs used in production.
- Work with assembly houses on build, component supply and production testing.
- Join sea trials and trace faults found in the field back to their cause.
What you will bring
- 5+ years designing PCBs that shipped in a product.
- Strong working knowledge of KiCad.
- Experience taking boards from prototype to production with a contract manufacturer.
- Low-power, mixed-signal design experience from drones, robotics or similar products.
- DC-DC converter design and layout.
- Grounding, filtering and layout for low noise and EMI.
- Confident bench skills with a scope, logic analyser and bench supply.
Nice to have
- Marine or outdoor electronics: sealing, connectors and corrosion.
- RS232, RS485, CAN and Ethernet interfaces.
- Microcontroller firmware or embedded Linux.
- Integrating satellite communications such as Iridium or Starlink.
Why join
- Your boards go to sea Scout has held station offshore for 40 days at a time and rides out storms at sea, and your boards will be what keeps it running.
- Breadth of work You will work across power, compute, navigation and sensor electronics, so you see how each design decision plays out on the whole boat.
- Sensitive sensors to design for Scout's hydrophones track underwater vehicles and listen for whales and dolphins, so clean power and grounding make a measurable difference to the results.
- Customers who depend on it Survey companies and research programmes rely on Scout's data, and every dataset they receive runs through the electronics you design.
How to apply
Email your CV to hello@onlineoceans.com with "Electronics Engineer" in the subject line. Add a few lines on what you have built and why the ocean matters to you.
Not a perfect match? Apply anyway. We reply to every application. No agencies, please.
We keep applicant details for six months after a decision. See our privacy policy. Back to all roles.