Supporting Tech Lead - Maritime in London

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards. As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

We're looking to bring on fast-moving engineer with credible “whole-system” UUV design experience to help break the decision deadlocks, close the design & help manage the wider team day to day.

The day-to-day:

• Own Production Pathway: Ensure the design is production-ready from the start: design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for test. Every design decision should answer the question: "can a technician build unit #37 the same way unit #1 was built?"
• Own design documentation, version control, and assembly instructions. The design isn't done when the prototype works: it's done when someone who wasn't in the room can build it from the documentation.
• Support supplier selection and qualification: know which components are available at volume, which need custom development, and which are single-source risks.
• Drive the transition from "engineer-built prototype" to "documented, repeatable, production-ready build" across 40 units.
• Drive Integration & Testing: Work alongside the engineering team to integrate every subsystem: flight controller (FC Board), edge compute, hydrophone array, satcom, network router, sensors.
• Coordinate with the Software Tech Lead on the on-glider software stack.
• Set the test strategy from bench through tank, and open-water sea trials. Move fast: first prototype in weeks/months. This is a high-pressure environment with tight timelines. We need someone who thrives under that kind of pressure.
• Build, test, learn, iterate.

Break Design Deadlocks:

• Bring UUV systems experience to the decision table. When the team faces competing approaches, use your knowledge of what works underwater: what's been proven, what fails at depth, what scales to production: to define the most functional path forward based on the information available.
• Not waiting for perfect data. Not deferring because someone has more experience. Assessing the options, making the call, explaining why, and moving on.
• The team has deep expertise across mechanical, electrical, and embedded domains: your job is to ensure that expertise translates into decisions and forward momentum, not further analysis.

Close the Design:

• Work with the existing technical team to drive Helsing's Maritime products from concept to something that can be built. Support and build on the architectural decisions already made while closing the remaining design gaps across all sub-systems (eg. hull, propulsion, variable buoyancy system, power, etc.).
• Own tradeoff calls that span mechanical, electrical, and embedded software boundaries. Be ready to explain the rationale clearly enough that the team buys in and moves forward.
• Know when a design is "good enough" to build and when it needs more iteration. Ensure the team doesn't get stuck in endless decision/refinement loops.
• Think about scaled manufacturing from day one, just to prototyping.

You should apply if you:

• Built, integrated, tested, and deployed complex electromechanical systems. Not academic/simulated/paper.
• Systems-level decision-making across mechanical, electrical, and embedded software.
• Technical decisiveness: closes tradeoffs, explains reasoning, moves on.
• Pace and learning velocity: operates at startup speed, ramps up fast in new domains.
• Collaborative communication: runs design reviews, manages technical output, gets buy-in.

Note: We operate in an industry where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

Nice to Have:

• Prototype-to-production experience.
• Direct UUV, AUV, or underwater glider experience.
• Buoyancy-driven platforms, underwater propulsion, or VBS.
• Subsea comms (Iridium SBD), underwater acoustics, or edge compute (Jetson/similar).
• Defence or defence-adjacent programmes.
• LARS and vessel operations.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields. Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns. The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world.

Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward.

In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts.

We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary and VSOP options.
• Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation.
• Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance.
• Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health).
• Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances.
• Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers.
• Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work.
• A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled “Infraduction”), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company. This is your opportunity to learn our tech stack, explore the company, and learn how we get things done - all whilst working with other engineering teams from day one.

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity.