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Location
Torrance, CA
Salary
$200,000 - $240,000
Type
Full-Time
Calibration
Candidate rejected3d ago
Really liked the candidate but they are looking for a role focused on Rust, which is not a technology we plan to use in the near future.
About Andrenam
Andrenam closed a $10M seed in 36 hours, led by First Round Capital with Also Capital, Long Journey, Homebrew, Banter, 201, Wavefunction, and the Colorado School of Mines Venture Fund. CEO Matej Cernosek is ex-SpaceX; CTO Alex Chu came out of Qualia. The ~15-person team is stacked with engineers from SpaceX, Anduril, Saronic, Palantir, ABL Space, and Arc. This is not a napkin-and-a-deck story — Andrenam is already deploying next-generation buoys off the California coast and was selected for the Navy's ANTX Coastal Trident, where it meshed multiple units and fused live sonar in the cloud.
Andrenam is building the sonar mesh for the ocean: a distributed network of low-cost, semi-attritable smart buoys that listen above and below the surface and stream acoustic data to the cloud, where ML localizes, classifies, and tracks vessels in real time. Each buoy carries solar, a battery pack, GPS, AIS, environmental sensors, and a Starlink backhaul, with an array of hydrophones below; fused across a field of nodes, time-difference-of-arrival becomes dots on a map — submarines for the Navy, unmanned underwater vehicles around ports and critical infrastructure, and surface traffic for the Coast Guard. It replaces Cold War-era SOSUS "sonar shacks" with persistent, autonomous awareness of the last dark domain. The team works out of Torrance, CA.
Why Andrenam
Tweets, press, and people that show why this team is worth your time.
Link
Andrenam Raised $10 Million in 36 Hours to Bring AI to the Sonar Age
Andrenam closed its $10 million seed round in just 36 hours, aiming to modernize undersea surveillance with AI-powered sonar systems.
Link
Andrenam: Pioneering AI-Driven Undersea Intelligence
Founded by SpaceX alumni, Andrenam is transforming maritime surveillance with AI-powered, distributed sonar networks.
Image
Andrenam: Undersea Intelligence at Scale, Anywhere
An overview of Andrenam's AI-powered, distributed maritime sensing network for persistent autonomous awareness.
About This Role
Andrenam is hiring its second firmware engineer to sit beside Devin Stafford, who currently runs firmware as a team of one plus an intern. This is a zero-to-one seat: you'll architect and own firmware for a distributed marine sensor network that has to survive months at sea, backhaul over Starlink, and hold to military-grade reliability. The bandwidth math is blunt — the team is at max capacity, recent contracts require integrating external partners' software, and without this hire, deliveries slip and features get deprioritized.
You'll write C/C++ across bare-metal and RTOS MCU platforms, do embedded Linux work (U-Boot, kernel, drivers, boot flow), bring boards up alongside the electrical team, and validate end-to-end from bench to full-system integration. You'll interface constantly with the electrical team and Alex Chu's software/data-platform team to get sensor data off the buoy and into the cloud. Ramp is fast — there's nowhere to hide on a team this small.
What You'll Own
- Architect and develop firmware for a distributed marine sensor network — MCU firmware plus embedded Linux
- Bare-metal and RTOS development; drive firmware design decisions and the evolution of the stack
- Board bring-up through final integration with the full distributed system, alongside the electrical team
- Hardware-level debugging with oscilloscopes, DMMs, and logic analyzers
- Secure, military-grade-standard firmware; CI/CD for firmware builds
- Partner with the data-platform team to move sensor data from buoy to cloud
- Ramp: month 1 — systems-level understanding of the codebase, first task assigned; month 3 — embedded in a project and contributing confidently; month 6 — proactively suggesting improvements across neighboring projects
Requirements
- Solid C and C++ with strong programming-language fundamentals
- Proficient with microcontrollers across bare-metal and RTOS MCU platforms
- Embedded Linux exposure (U-Boot, kernel, kernel drivers, boot flow)
- Comfortable with electrical debugging tools; Python familiarity; CI/CD experience
Execution and Ownership
- Firmware generalist — competencies that transfer across many firmware varieties, not one narrow niche
- Low ego; takes criticism without taking it personally
- High autonomy; understands what a startup demands
- Contributes to the vision and makes good suggestions, but goes heads-down and ships when it's time to execute
Background
- ~4–7 years as a firmware generalist. Fewer years only if the signal is exceptional — very early-stage startup, heavy greenfield, lots of side projects
- Startup pedigree accelerates the bar; big-company-only backgrounds with weak underlying signal are a harder sell
- Tinkerer — side projects, curious outside the day job
Location and Visa
- In-office, Torrance, CA, five days a week
- US citizenship required
Nice-to-Have
- FPGA development and performance analysis (Verilog/VHDL)
- Safety-critical software for aerospace or military applications
- Embedded distributed systems experience
- Athletic or competitive background (e.g., competitive chess)
Andrenam is
a 15-person defense/maritime tech startup in Torrance building AI-powered passive acoustic sensing buoys for the Navy, Coast Guard, and port security.
This is
a zero-to-one, high-autonomy firmware seat: architect and own firmware for a distributed marine sensor network.
Solid C/C++,
microcontroller proficiency, and embedded Linux exposure are must-haves.
Job Details
Experience
4-7 years
Salary
$200,000 - $240,000
Equity
0.25% - 0.5%
Visa Sponsorship
No
Employment Type
Full-Time
Work Arrangement
In office
Benefits & Perks
401(k)
Flexible Pto And Paid Holidays
Lunch And Snacks In Office
Long-term Equity Incentive Program
Green Flags
Early engineer at a defense/hardware startup (Anduril, Saronic, ABL, Arc, SpaceX)
Personal hardware/firmware side projects; embedded work on GitHub
FPGA (Verilog/VHDL) or safety-critical aerospace/military software experience
Red Flags
Backend/app-only background with no embedded or hardware exposure
Narrow specialist with no generalist experience
Big-company-only background with weak greenfield/ownership signal
Required Candidate Q&A
Question 1
Are you able to work in-office in Torrance, CA five days a week?
Question 2
Are you a US citizen, and how soon could you start?
Candidate scorecard
· 11 criteriaSolid C and C++ with strong programming-language fundamentals
Proficient with microcontrollers across bare-metal and RTOS MCU platforms
Embedded Linux exposure (U-Boot, kernel, drivers, boot flow) — strong plus