- Salary
- $30k – $45k/yr
- Location
- London, England, GB
- Type
- Full-time
- Department
- Engineering
- Experience
- 2+ years
- Source
- Y Combinator
Description
About Us
"Seeing Systems is building autonomous drone systems that can perceive, navigate, and act intelligently in complex real-world environments."
We're advancing autonomy through monocular vision, sensor fusion, and robust system design - drones that keep working where traditional systems fail, supported by an agentic stack that reduces operator cognitive load.
Our first product is an FPV-class drone built from the ground up with a modular hardware architecture. If we get the first platform right, we can move fast on everything else: larger airframes, longer range, new payloads, and new mission profiles without rebuilding the stack each time.
We were founded by brothers Matthew and Alexander Le Maitre. Matthew is a former Jane Street engineer and Cambridge CS graduate with a background in autonomous systems research. Alexander is a self-taught hardware engineer who has been building unmanned systems and military-grade electronics.
We're an early-stage, fast-moving team working at the intersection of robotics, perception, and real-world deployment. We iterate weekly. We test in real environments.
The Role
You will design, build, and test the electronics inside our platforms as a core member of our growing hardware team.
That means hands-on electrical engineering work across our aircraft and ground stations: PCB design and layout, board bring-up, power systems, harnessing, sensor integration, and test support. You'll take ownership of defined subsystems and see them through from schematic to a working board on a flying aircraft.
You'll report to our Founding Hardware Engineer and work closely with Alex, our co-founder and hardware lead. This is a role for an engineer early in their career who wants to grow fast: you'll be given real responsibility, real deadlines, and real feedback from the field, with senior engineers beside you at the bench.
Within 30 days: you've assembled, brought up, and debugged boards on one of our platforms and joined a field test. Within 90 days: you've taken a subsystem board from schematic through layout to a validated revision flying on one of our drones.
What You'll Do
- Design PCBs for defined subsystems under the direction of the Founding Hardware Engineer: sensor boards, power distribution, BMS, payload interfaces, and supporting electronics.
- Own board bring-up and debug for your subsystems: soldering, rework, test fixtures, and fault-finding down to component level.
- Support schematic capture and layout across the wider hardware stack, including design reviews, signal and power integrity checks, and documentation.
- Design and build harnessing: connector selection, wiring, and integration of electronics into airframes and ground station hardware.
- Support RF and wireless testing: telemetry, video downlink, and command & control range testing in the field.
- Run test campaigns with our testing lead: prepare aircraft, capture data, log failures, and feed findings back into the next revision.
- Work with manufacturers on quotes, DFM feedback, and incoming inspection as we scale production.
- Use AI tools to accelerate design, firmware, and debug.
What We're Looking For
- Minimum 2 years of hands-on electrical or electronics engineering experience (professional, or a genuinely equivalent portfolio of shipped personal projects).
- PCB design experience in Altium or KiCad - you've taken at least one board from schematic to fabricated, working hardware.
- Solid grounding in analog, digital, and power electronics fundamentals.
- Confident at the bench: soldering (including fine-pitch rework), oscilloscopes, multimeters, and methodical fault-finding.
- Comfortable with the gap between "works on the bench" and "works at range in the field."
- Bias toward shipping.
- Comfortable getting outside and testing in the real world with us.
Nice to Have
- Defence, aerospace, or UAV industry experience.
- Personal experience building and flying drones, robots, or other unmanned systems.
- Embedded work with STM32-class MCUs and protocols such as SPI, I2C, UART, USB, CAN, and Ethernet.
- Exposure to RF/wireless design or antenna integration.
- C/C++ firmware for board bring-up and diagnostics.
- EMI/EMC awareness and pre-compliance testing.
- Early-stage startup experience.
Why Join
- Real ownership of subsystems from day one, with senior engineers invested in your growth.
- Fast iteration: hardware in operators' hands in months, not years.
- Small, high-agency team with a direct line from idea to field test.
- Real deployment pressure, real feedback, real learning.
- A clear path to grow into broader hardware ownership as the team scales.
- Snack of choice stocked in the workshop.
