Apply on hiring.oshendata.com
About the Role
You land in Iceland alone. A shipping container of 20 C-Stars is waiting on the dock, and you run the final checks. Then the skipper pulls out, the weather has turned, the waves are rising. So you walk down the pier and talk a fisherman into taking you out instead. In freezing spray you put 20 robots over the side, watch them come alive on your laptop, and head back to shore to check every data feed. One is misbehaving. You sit in the back of a van, laptop open, and diagnose it from memory, because you know these robots better than anyone alive. Then your phone goes: a customer in the Canaries needs a training course. You swap your down jacket for flip-flops, fly south, and spend two days teaching them how to run a C-Star fleet. Back in Plymouth, you debrief the team on everything that broke and everything you’d change, then settle in for two weeks remotely piloting a constellation of robots 2,000 miles away.
That’s a fortnight. The job is exhausting, exhilarating, and it never goes to plan.
The role
You are Oshen at the customer’s site. You plan the mission, get the robots there, get them in the water, and get them working: in the Arctic, in the tropics, on a naval exercise, on a research pier. You plan the logistics, the shipping and the export licences, you run the training, you fix what breaks in the field with nobody to call, and then you control the constellation once it is at sea. When you get home, you remotely pilot C-Star constellations, run experiments, share what you learned, and muck in with everything else going on at Oshen HQ.
What you might work on
- Preparing a fleet for a mission: configuring robots, checking sensors and communications, packing spares and proving the system is ready before it leaves Plymouth.
- Planning vessels, ports, weather windows, shipping, customs and the practical sequence that gets a constellation safely into the water.
- Deploying C-Stars from docks, fishing boats, naval vessels and research ships in the UK and overseas.
- Diagnosing hardware, software, communications and sensor problems with limited tools and imperfect information.
- Mission-managing robots already at sea, monitoring health and data, and changing the plan as weather and customer priorities move.
- Training customers to launch and operate C-Stars, then writing guidance clear enough that they succeed without you.
- Debriefing the engineering team with evidence from the field, and helping implement the changes that make the next mission easier.
What Oshen is
We make the ocean’s eyes and ears. We tell people what is happening across the 70% of the globe covered by ocean. We do this with C-Star constellations, swarms of one-metre wind-and-solar robots that sail the open ocean. Ours is the only surface robot to sail into a Category 5 hurricane and come back with the data. We design and build them in Plymouth and deploy them for the US Government, the Royal Navy and climate scientists, giving information across an ocean the modern world depends on and currently cannot see.
If we succeed, navies will find dark ships and underwater threats before they reach critical infrastructure. Governments will predict hurricanes and other extreme weather earlier. Scientists will better understand how the ocean and climate are changing.
The people joining now will shape both the technology and the company. Very few engineers get to take something from an idea in the workshop to a real mission in the Atlantic, then use what it learns to make the next one better. Here, you can.
Who you are
- Technical enough to diagnose a robot from the back of a van, and calm and confident enough to do it while a customer watches. We are open to any STEM background: mechanical, electrical, aerospace or marine engineering, physics, computer science, oceanography, or a technical trade or operational role. We care far more about grit and raw ability than what your CV says.
- Systematic under pressure. Faced with a robot that is not behaving, you gather evidence, narrow the possibilities and work out the next useful test rather than changing three things at once.
- Comfortable with a command line, log files and a bit of scripting. You do not need to be a software engineer, but a terminal should not put you off. Python or similar is a real advantage.
- Evidence that you can make physical or technical things work, from Formula Student, robotics, fieldwork, expeditions, boats, labs, the military, a startup, or serious personal projects.
- Attention to detail and a high bar for what counts as done. In the field, the shortcut you take on Monday is the recovery operation on Thursday.
- High autonomy and ownership. You will often be alone or in a pair, responsible for a high-stakes project, and you will need to make sensible decisions without waiting for perfect instructions.
- A clear communicator with customers and teammates, and disciplined about writing down what happened so the next person does not have to rediscover it.
- Adaptable. The robots, the software, the customers and your role will all change under you, repeatedly.
- You want frequent international travel, work at sea and periods of irregular hours. Maritime or naval experience, small boat handling, RYA or sea survival tickets and a full driving licence are all useful. We will support you to get the ones you are missing.
Compensation
- Salary Range: £32,000 – £38,000
- Equity: £25,000 – £90,000 of stock options at our most recent company valuation, depending on experience, implemented through an EMI options scheme.
Apply on hiring.oshendata.com
Pay: £32,000.00-£38,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company events
- On-site parking
Work Location: In person
