Founding Hardware / Embedded Engineer

Philyron, from a16z Speedrun, builds embedded hardware and software for predictive-maintenance sensors on ships. Sensors attach to critical parts inside the vessel, such as the engine room and junction box, and collect vibration and thermal data. Machine learning on the backend predicts when a ship will fail.

Beta-tested sensors are already on local ferries. They expect about 10 vessels deployed by year-end, across cargo ships, tankers, tugs, and ferries, and they recently signed a government contract with a Hawaii agency. Advisors and angels come from the defense industry, and international operators in Japan, Chile, and Germany are joining. The longer bet is to aggregate maritime-maintenance data and build medium-sized autonomous surface vessels, starting from the maintenance problem that crewless ships have.

The founder comes from maritime and shipbuilding, with naval supply-chain research at Stanford. Pre-seed, about 1 to 10 people, founded in 2026, in San Francisco. Defense-adjacent, and moving fast.

Philyron is hiring a founding hardware and embedded engineer to own the industrial sensing hardware. That is the full lifecycle: schematic capture, PCB design, assembly, wiring, soldering, and bench testing, for deployment in harsh maritime environments. A predecessor already designed the PCB and enclosures. Month one is mostly assembling what is already built. They have about 20 sensors and need many more, quickly, for signed paid pilots in Seattle, Florida, and New York.

From there the work is post-deployment changes based on what operators need, new sensors on the existing system, and eventually the first autonomous surface vessel prototypes. The long-term bar is someone who can build from nothing, hardware through firmware. You integrate accelerometers, thermal cameras, and IMUs. You handle power regulation, connectors, and enclosures. Embedded work is microcontrollers such as ESP32 and Raspberry Pi, plus firmware. Industrial IoT, robotics, marine, automotive, or other harsh-environment hardware is a plus.

They want a recent grad or current student who already has real hands-on hardware depth. Personal projects you fully owned matter more than a logo. Team projects make it hard to tell who actually did the PCB work. A big-name internship that did not include real PCB work is a miss. Software-only is a miss. This is framed as a possible chief product officer and co-founder seat: someone who brings their own vision. After about 6 to 7 months of mutual fit, that path is CPO with about 5% to 10% equity.

In office in San Francisco, at the hardware lab, and they want someone who can start now. Visa sponsorship is not available. US citizenship or a green card is required because of defense and government work. Equity on the seat is about 1% to 1.5%. Posted work intensity is 9-9-6. Experience they have in mind is about 0 to 1 years, with the depth coming from projects rather than tenure. The process is an in-person intro at the lab, then a hands-on work trial on the existing sensors. They want your own opinion on how to improve the prototype.