Staff 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 an experienced scientist/engineer in ocean acoustics to help shape and advance Sofar's underwater acoustics platform.

• Help shape Sofar's underwater acoustics strategy, and support the technical vision for an underwater acoustics platform that supports real-world marine applications.

• Develop capabilities to detect, classify, and localize underwater objects using passive and/or active acoustic sensing methods

• Advance methods for creating acoustic maps of the marine environment, including characterization of ambient soundscapes, propagation conditions, and relevant oceanographic context

• Provide an acoustics-centric perspective on sensing system design, deployment strategy, data quality, and performance validation

• Collaborate with Sofar's oceanic and sensing scientists, software engineers, and firmware teams to translate acoustic research into operational products

• Coordinate and conduct field experiments, data analyses, and simulation studies to evaluate acoustic system performance in real-world ocean conditions

• Bring deep expertise in marine acoustics to complement Sofar's ocean science, sensing, and forecasting teams

• Contribute to product requirements, technical roadmaps, and research 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

• 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

• 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 contributing to research programs, technical partnerships, or externally funded work

• 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.

• $121,000 - $171,000

• The range listed is what we reasonably expect to pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and may be modified in the future. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, experience,…