Machinist

About us

Ulysses is building the autonomy platform for the ocean with mass-deployable, fully autonomous surface and subsea robots with dual-domain, read-and-write capabilities. Our oceans are in trouble; we’ve neglected them, and we allow bad actors to misuse them. Ulysses will manage our oceans effectively, persistently, and cheaply. We're developing autonomous surface and subsea drones, robotics, and AI systems to tackle critical challenges across nature, infrastructure, and maritime security.

Our first product line is a suite of autonomous drones and attachments that makes restoring seagrass ecosystems cheaper and easier. We are currently working with governments in the US and Australia and leading environmental groups like The Nature Conservancy. We are a Series A company backed by top VCs.

We're looking for a CNC Machinist to join our machine shop in San Francisco. You'll be making real parts that go into real robots - one week it's a one-off prototype bracket the engineering team needs by Friday, the next it's a production run of pressure vessels going to the bottom of the ocean.

The core of the job is the loop: CAM the part in Fusion 360, run it on our Haas machines, measure what came off, and take what you learned back into the program until the job is dialled in and repeatable. You'll own that whole loop yourself - you're not handing a program to someone else to run, or handing a part to someone else to inspect.

You'll also build your own fixtures and sit close enough to the engineers that your feedback actually changes the drawings.

If you've got a few years under your belt and you're tired of running the same part for the ten thousandth time, this is the opposite of that. And we care more about how you think about parts than how many years you've been making them - if you're a strong recent graduate of a machining or manufacturing technology program, or you came up through an apprenticeship, and you can already CAM and measure, we want to talk to you.

We'll train you on the rest.

• CAM the job in Fusion 360: Take a model from engineering and build the toolpaths -

• 3-axis and 5-axis milling and turning - with sound tooling, work holding, and strategy choices behind them

• Run our Haas machines: Set up, prove out, and run the job: offsets, work coordinates, tool library, first article through production

• Measure what you made: Inspect and qualify your own parts - calipers, micrometers, indicators, bore gauges, height gauge, CMM - and own the first article inspection that goes with them

• Close the loop: Take what the measurements tell you back into the program and the setup: adjust offsets, tweak toolpaths and feeds and speeds, fix the fixture, and lock the job in so it repeats

• Design and build your own work holding and fixturing: for one-offs and for repeatable production

• Work directly with our engineers to give DFM feedback and get parts production-ready

• Keep the shop running well: preventative maintenance, tooling and material stock, coolant, organization

• Help us build out the processes, documentation, and quality practices as the shop scales

• Strong in Fusion 360 CAM: You can take a model and build the toolpaths yourself - you understand tool selection, feeds and speeds, stepover and engagement, and why a strategy that looks fine on screen might chatter or break a tool in the machine

• Comfortable running Haas machines: Setups, offsets, work coordinates, tool library, proving out a program safely, and reading G-code well enough to edit at the control when you need to

• Strong metrology fundamentals: You're well acquainted with calipers, micrometers, indicators, gauge pins, and bore gauges; you know when a measurement is lying to you; you understand…