Electrical Engineer

We are seeking a full-time Electrical Engineer to design, build, test, and own the electrical systems that power and control our autonomous marine robots. You will work across the robot's electrical architecture—from circuit and PCB design to power distribution, sensing, communications, waterproof electronics, system integration, and field troubleshooting.

CRABI is building autonomous robots that live aboard commercial ships and clean their hulls while they are underway. Marine biofouling creates enormous hydrodynamic drag, forcing ships to burn more fuel to maintain speed. By keeping hulls continuously clean, our robots can eliminate a major source of wasted energy across the global fleet—reducing fuel consumption, operating costs, and ultimately maritime CO2 emissions by more than 100 million tons per year.

Building a robot that operates underwater on the hull of a moving ship creates electrical challenges very different from those of a typical indoor robot. Electronics need to survive water, vibration, corrosion, high currents, magnetic fields, long cable runs, and electrically noisy shipboard environments.

This is a highly hands-on engineering role with significant ownership. You will design hardware, bring up and debug new boards, integrate complete systems, support field testing, investigate failures, and improve the next generation of the robot.

US work authorization ad ability to travel is a precondition of employment. The company will not consider candidates who require sponsorship for a work-authorized visa, now or in the future.

Job Responsibilities:

• Design schematics and PCB layouts for embedded control, sensing, communications, and power systems.
• Develop electrical architectures, power distribution, cable harnesses, grounding, shielding, and interconnects.
• Bring up, test, characterize, and debug PCBAs and integrated robotic systems.
• Select components and design for reliability, manufacturability, environmental durability, and cost.
• Design electronics for waterproof and marine environments, including sealed connectors, penetrations, and enclosures.
• Develop test procedures, fixtures, and validation methods.
• Troubleshoot electrical failures from the component level through complete robots.
• Support robot assembly, lab testing, field testing, and repairs.
• Work closely with mechanical, firmware, GNC, manufacturing, and test engineers.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent demonstrated experience.
• Strong fundamentals in analog and digital electronics and electrical system design.
• Experience designing schematics and PCBs in KiCad, Altium, OrCAD, or similar tools.
• Experience bringing up and debugging custom PCBAs.
• Proficiency with oscilloscopes, multimeters, power supplies, and other common electrical test equipment.
• Strong hands-on soldering, PCB rework, cable fabrication, and prototype debugging skills.
• Experience integrating sensors, actuators, embedded controllers, and communication interfaces.
• Understanding of grounding, signal integrity, power integrity, protection, and EMI/EMC fundamentals.
• Ability to systematically troubleshoot complex electrical and electromechanical systems.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience designing electronics for robotics, automotive, aerospace, marine, or industrial systems.
• Experience with EMI/EMC-aware design, grounding, shielding, filtering, and electrical noise troubleshooting.
• Experience with RF systems, antennas, matching networks, or RF PCB layout.
• Experience with marine electrical systems, shipboard power, or applicable marine standards.
• Experience with AC mains or high-voltage systems, including isolation, grounding, creepage, clearance, and protection.
• Experience with controlled-impedance PCB design, differential signaling, and high-speed digital interfaces.
• Experience with high-current DC systems, batteries, motors, or power electronics.
• Experience designing for waterproof, subsea, or environmentally sealed applications.
• Familiarity with Linux and embedded systems.

Bonus Qualifications:

• Experience performing EMI/EMC pre-compliance or certification testing.
• Experience with FCC, CE, IEC, UL, marine classification, or similar compliance processes.
• Experience using spectrum analyzers, LISNs, VNAs, current probes, or near-field probes.
• Experience with circuit, signal-integrity, power-integrity, thermal, RF, or electromagnetic simulation.
• Experience with high-voltage test methods such as hipot or leakage-current testing.
• Experience with FPGA, SerDes, high-speed ADC/DAC, precision analog, or instrumentation systems.
• Experience with environmental, vibration, pressure, thermal, corrosion, or reliability testing.
• Experience developing production test fixtures or manufacturing test systems.