Field Test Engineering Lead

# Field Test Engineering Lead Blue Ops  (FL) - West Palm Beach, FL 33411## Description##
** Position Summary
** Blue Ops designs, builds, and fields autonomous unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for defense and national security customers. We are seeking a hands-on field engineer who can operate in two closely coupled capacities: as a Field Test Engineer who plans, instruments, executes, and reports on at-sea and shoreside test events, and as an Engineering Technician Lead who provides technical direction to the technician workforce responsible for building, integrating, commissioning, maintaining, and repairing the fleet.

This is a dual-purpose role for someone who is equally comfortable authoring a test plan and running the data reduction behind it and standing in the bilge at 0500 with a multimeter tracing an intermittent NMEA 2000 fault before the boat launches. We are looking for the kind of field engineer who works independently at customer, OEM, and partner sites, drives problems through to full resolution rather than handing them off, documents what was done so the next person can repeat it, and picks up unfamiliar hardware and software platforms quickly.

The successful candidate is the person who makes test events happen on schedule, with instrumented vessels, complete data, and a technician team that knows exactly what it is doing and why.
** Key Responsibilities
**** Engineering Technician Leadership
*** Lead, schedule, and mentor a team of engineering technicians across vessel build, integration, maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair activities at multiple Florida sites.
* Provide technical direction to engineering technicians and determine priorities, methods, and standards for execution of work.
* Own the daily work plan for the technician team: assign tasks, sequence work against test and delivery schedules, verify quality of completed work, and escalate resource and schedule risk early.
* Conduct performance reviews for assigned technician personnel, set development goals, and support hiring and onboarding of new technicians.
* Develop and approve engineering test procedures, acceptance criteria, and corrective actions.
* Establish and enforce shop and field standards for workmanship, including marine electrical practice, connectorization and strain relief, sealing and corrosion control, torque and fastener control, and cable routing and labeling.
* Direct installation, integration, and checkout of vessel systems: propulsion and drivetrain, steering and actuation, autopilot and flight controller hardware, power distribution, NMEA 2000 and CAN networks, RF and SATCOM equipment, radar, AIS, EO/IR, and onboard compute.
* Develop and maintain build travelers, wiring diagrams, integration checklists, pre-operation and post-operation checkout procedures, calibration and configuration instructions, and maintenance documentation; drive their consistent use in the field.
* Lead troubleshooting of complex, cross-domain faults — mechanical, electrical, communications network, RF, sensor, power, wiring, and software — using disciplined root-cause analysis rather than parts swapping, and drive each issue through to full resolution.
* Manage tooling, test equipment, calibration, spares, and consumables across sites; forecast material needs against the test and delivery schedule.
* Own shop and on-water safety practice for technician activities, including lockout/tagout, lifting and launch/recovery operations, battery and fuel handling, and personal protective equipment.
* Deliver hands-on technical training to technicians, operators, and end users covering safe operation, troubleshooting, and long-term system reliability, and build the written knowledge base so capability is not resident in a…