MNRecruit
Hardware Engineer
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R&D Hardware Prototyping Engineer
Hardware Whisperer 🌊⚙️
ÂŁ55,000 - ÂŁ65,000 + significant equity
London (Hoxton) with occasional UK and international travel
Foundational role for an entrepreneurial builder
This is not a maintenance role.
This is not a “design it and hand it off” role.
This is a from-zero-to-ocean role.
You’ll be the person who turns bold ideas into working marine hardware - sketching, designing, building, testing, breaking, fixing and ultimately deploying systems that need to perform in some of the harshest environments on Earth.
You’ll have genuine ownership from concept through to deployment, working across design engineering, prototyping, fabrication, integration and field testing.
If you enjoy actually building things, solving problems as they emerge and seeing your work deployed in the real world, this could be a very interesting opportunity.
What You’ll Do
You’ll own early-stage hardware development end-to-end, including:
- Taking concepts from initial design through prototyping, testing, integration and field deployment
- Designing, building and iterating marine hardware including buoys, sensor housings, enclosures, mooring systems and edge-compute units
- Producing and working from engineering drawings, developing practical designs that can actually be fabricated and deployed
- Rapidly prototyping, assembling and testing hardware, adapting designs quickly as requirements and timelines inevitably change
- Integrating, calibrating and validating marine sensors including salinity, temperature, pressure and optical systems
- Designing and iterating waterproof, corrosion-resistant enclosures and sensor layouts for demanding marine environments
- Working with different manufacturing and fabrication processes, potentially including 3D printing, machining, welding and rotomoulding
- Supporting small-batch fabrication and working with external suppliers and manufacturers
- Managing hardware projects from a technical and practical perspective, coordinating multiple moving parts through to delivery
- Working closely with software, robotics and oceanography specialists to ensure hardware and systems integrate effectively
- Supporting field deployment, maintenance and troubleshooting in the UK and overseas
- Thinking beyond initial deployment - considering corrosion, biofouling, maintenance cycles, error warnings and long-term reliability
- Documenting designs, test results and iterations so that hardware can continually improve
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In short, you’ll be involved in actually building stuff rather than simply designing it on paper.
Who You Are
You’re a hands-on engineer and natural problem solver who enjoys working in environments where the answer isn't always obvious.
You might come from a design engineering, hardware R&D, marine technology, robotics, instrumentation or product development background.
We’re looking for someone who:
- Has strong experience designing, building and testing real physical hardware, rather than purely producing CAD models
- Can take a project from concept through to deployment
- Understands engineering drawings, prototyping, fabrication and practical design
- Has experience working with sensors, electronics or integrated hardware systems
- Is comfortable managing projects as well as getting hands-on with the engineering
- Is resilient and able to keep moving when timelines, specifications and priorities change
- Learns quickly and can get up to speed with unfamiliar technologies and processes
- Enjoys working across disciplines and figuring things out as they go
- Is comfortable working in workshops, labs, harbours and potentially offshore environments
- Has a genuine builder/maker mentality - someone who would rather make and test something than spend weeks theorising about it
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Marine experience would be highly valuable
You don't necessarily need to have worked on exactly this type of technology before, but experience with marine hardware, sensors, buoys, subsea systems, maritime engineering or other harsh-environment equipment would be a strong advantage.
Experience in a start-up or early-stage environment would also be valuable, particularly where you've had to take ownership and work across the boundaries between engineering, project management and delivery.
Nice-to-haves
Not all of these are required, but experience with any of the following would be useful:
- Small solar systems and lithium battery design
- LoRa, 4G or low-power telemetry
- Marine-grade materials and corrosion management
- Biofouling mitigation
- Maritime standards or regulations
- 3D printing, machining, welding or rotomoulding
- Marine sensors and instrumentation
- Field deployment and maintenance of hardware
- Experience integrating multiple hardware and software components
Why Join?
- A mission-driven role at the intersection of oceans, climate and frontier technology
- A genuine opportunity to shape core hardware IP from day one
- Significant equity and the opportunity to become an important part of an ambitious early-stage team
- Direct involvement in projects from concept to deployment
- The chance to see things you've designed and built operating in the real world
- A role where your engineering judgement and practical problem-solving will have a visible impact
- UK and international travel to support testing and deployment
If you're the sort of engineer who wants to build something, throw it in the ocean, find out what breaks and then make it better, we'd like to hear from you.
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