Internal Harness and Interconnect Engineer

Portland, OR

We are a renewable energy and ocean technology company committed to rapidly developing and deploying technologies that will ensure a sustainable future for Earth by unlocking the vast energy potential of its oceans. Our focus is on capturing civilizational levels of ultra-low-cost renewable energy for applications including computing and affordable renewable fuels delivered to shore.

The company is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and backed by leading venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, university endowments, and private investment offices. We operate as an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis.

Our staff have worked at organizations such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Tesla, Apple, Virgin Orbit, Astra, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, New Relic, Bridgewater, Raytheon, Disney Imagineering, and the US Army and Air Force, as well as research universities, startups, and small companies across a range of industries.

Our core technology is the node, a device that produces energy in the ocean’s harshest conditions for years at a time without human maintenance or intervention.

This role would exist in the Core Systems Integration & Test team. As the Internal Harness & Interconnect Engineer, you will own the dry-side nervous system of our node technology. You will be responsible for the architecture, physical hardening, and end-to-end delivery of all internal wiring, cabling, and interconnects across the entire system. In this role, you will bridge the gap between our Electrical Engineering and Core Systems & Software teams, manage external manufacturing partners, and serve as the go-to technical authority on the shop floor when diagnosing and resolving integration issues.

Your work will directly dictate the reliability and signal integrity of critical computing and power systems operating in continuous, uncrewed maritime environments.

Candidates should have strong interpersonal skills and be able to thrive in a creative, scrappy, and collaborative environment in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis. You will own your designs cradle-to-grave, from first concept through fabrication and deployment  you are an excellent engineer, regardless of your background, we want you to apply.

We strive to be the best engineering team on the planet and we compensate our team accordingly.

• Be a leading contributor on the complete interconnection lifecycle for all dry-side node electronics – including connector selection, harness routing, wire termination, backshell integration, potting, strain relief, and mechanical retention.
• Develop and standardize robust harness assembly workflows (crimping, soldering, potting, connectorization, and continuity/hipot testing) to ensure repeatable, high-yield builds from prototype to production.
• Embed Design for Excellence (DFX) into every harness iteration:
• DFM:
  Simplify connector counts, standardize keying/polarization, and optimize routing to eliminate mis-mates and reduce assembly cycle time.
• DFT:
  Integrate automated continuity test points and derating strategies to survive continuous thermal-mechanical stress and high-vibration ocean environments.
• Architect clean signal and power pathways, eliminating electromagnetic interference, crosstalk, and ground loops between high speed data channels and power lines.
• Manage the interconnect BOM and vendor pipeline driving procurement, tolerance analysis, second-sourcing, and obsolescence mitigation for future node architecture rollouts.
• Drive quality verification and shop-floor triage, leading first article inspections…