The Company

Sofar is on a mission to connect the world’s oceans. We design, build, and deploy the largest privately owned network of marine weather sensors to power the world’s best marine weather forecasts. Our data helps our customers to increase efficiency and reduce emissions, delivering tools to governments and other stakeholders to understand impacts of climate change on extreme weather and ocean health. We live on Planet Ocean, and our goal is to create the ocean intelligence needed to ensure a sustainable future.

The Position

You will be a key contributor to the design and testing of all our hardware products - working to design automated machines to help our engineering team stress-test our gear to failure, and automate production processes in support of our on-site manufacturing team to remove redundant and repetitive steps. You thrive in a small and collaborative multidisciplinary team, and enjoy diving into a problem and inventing practical solutions. You are goal oriented and enjoy seeing a project to completion. You understand the value of writing down a plan and staying organized, and approach problems with a practical process– build-test-iterate –to come up with creative solutions. Just make sure you do your hand calcs first! You strive for the shared success of improving the health of our oceans and planet by shipping a cohesive, solid and impactful product.

Some projects you might be a part of:

• Building a tensile testing machine to stress test our our next generation smart mooring cables to failure to learn how they break.
• Adding solenoids and sensors to an underwater hydrostatic testing chamber, and developing the control systems to actuate them for cyclic pressure testing.
• Designing and building pneumatic fixtures to support our in-house manufacturing team to eliminate repetitive and risky assembly tasks.
• Constructing novel test equipment for the harsh marine for shock and vibration, thermal cycling, stress testing, and wiring up all the sensors for data acquisition and analysis.

Responsibilities

• Own whole projects – from napkin sketch, to schematics, to firmware, testing, and documentation and communication of outcomes.
• Build, debug and use fixtures and prototypes.
• Write supporting documentation so others can safely operate what you build.
• Own the creation of firmware and software tools while using best practices for source and version control.
• Work closely with electrical, firmware and manufacturing engineers.

Minimum Job Qualifications

• At least 2 years of professional mechatronics experience.
• Experience with Python and C++.
• Experience using 3D CAD (Solidworks preferred).
• Experience with controls, loops and systems.
• Experience with electronics prototyping.
• You've designed and built at least one system or fixture that included actuation, electronics, mechanical and software elements.

Bonus Points

• Expertise in actuators and associated control strategies.
• Experience in a manufacturing environment working for aerospace, automotive, robotics, industrial or marine applications.
• Experience operating FDM 3D printers.
• Operating manual lathe, milling and other machining equipment.
• A passion for or connection to the ocean.

Employee Conduct

It is the responsibility of every employee to contribute to a positive work environment through cooperative and professional interactions with co-workers, customers, and vendors.

Equal Employment Opportunity

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other factors prohibited by law.