Principal Scientist - Underwater Acoustics

The Role

Sofar designs, builds, and deploys ocean sensing networks at a global scale to power ocean intelligence. We are expanding our sensing and intelligence capabilities into underwater acoustics and looking for a world-class expert in ocean acoustics to set the technical product vision for Sofar’s underwater acoustics platform.

• Lead Sofar’s underwater acoustics strategy, defining the technical vision for an underwater acoustics platform that supports real-world marine applications.

• Develop capabilities to detect, classify, localize, and track acoustic sources and targets using passive and/or active techniques.

• Drive AI/ML model development for edge-based and cloud-based acoustic intelligence models.

• Advance methods for mapping and characterizing the ocean soundscape—including ambient noise fields, acoustic propagation conditions (e.g., sound-speed structure and transmission loss), and the oceanographic and geoacoustic context that drives them.

• Provide an acoustics-centric perspective on sensing system design—including hydrophone/array selection, calibration, and geometry—as well as deployment strategy, data quality, and performance validation.

• Collaborate with Sofar’s ocean and sensing scientists, hardware and software engineers, to translate acoustics domain expertise into operational products.

• Design and conduct field experiments, at-sea data collection, data analyses, and modeling and simulation studies (including propagation and detection-performance modeling) to evaluate acoustic system performance under realistic ocean conditions.

• Help define product requirements, technical roadmaps, and priorities for new underwater acoustic capabilities.

• Represent Sofar externally with customers, research partners, government agencies, and the broader ocean acoustics community.

• Deep expertise in underwater acoustics

• Practical experience developing acoustic sensing systems or algorithms for detection, classification, localization, mapping, or environmental characterization

• Strong understanding of marine acoustic propagation, ambient noise, signal processing, and the practical constraints of ocean sensing in the real world

• Experience working with real-world acoustic datasets, field deployments, and/or operational sensing systems

• Experience applying statistical signal processing, machine learning, or modern AI methods to acoustic detection, classification, or environmental inference.

• Excellent communication skills, and you excel working in a cross-functional team

• Experience translating scientific research into operational products or customer-facing capabilities

• Ph.D. in acoustics, ocean engineering, electrical engineering, applied physics, oceanography, or a related field, but we will consider highly qualified candidates of any education level with equivalent experience

• Strong reputation within the ocean acoustics community, with experience leading externally funded research programs or strategic technical partnerships.

• Enthusiasm and experience in leveraging LLMs to magnify personal impact

• This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance. Under U.S. law, only U.S. citizens are eligible to obtain a security clearance.

• Familiarity with embedded sensing systems, firmware constraints, or edge processing for acoustic applications

• Familiarity with the constraints of autonomous ocean platforms, including limited power, bandwidth, onboard compute, sensor calibration, and long-duration deployments.

• Comfort working in production codebases when necessary to personally deliver changes.

• $137,000 - $185,000

• The range listed is what we reasonably expect to pay for this role at the time of this posting. We…