Acoustic Researcher
The sea is the physical layer of the economy — and Europe's most exposed flank. Everything that moves beneath the surface leaves an acoustic trace, but the ocean is a brutal channel: multipath, ambient noise, shifting propagation. Reading it is first and foremost a physics problem.
France and Europe have a world-class heritage in underwater acoustics and sonar. Pelagon's bet is to bridge that science with modern physical-AI strategies and a distributed fleet of UUVs, buoys, sailbuoys and seabed sensors. As our Acoustic Researcher, you are the physics backbone of that system — the person who understands underwater sound deeply enough that our models can learn from it, partnering directly with the AI Engineers who consume the features, representations and data you define.
What you'll do
- Model underwater sound propagation across realistic ocean environments to power our synthetic data generation pipeline.
- Characterize and classify the acoustic signatures of surface and underwater targets; build the ground-truth understanding our multimodal acoustic model is trained against.
- Design and reason about sensor and array geometries: what to deploy, where, and how to extract maximum information from constrained, distributed vectors.
- Work hand in hand with AI Engineers on physics-constrained learning strategies and models.
What we look for
- Deep grounding in underwater acoustics, sonar, or a closely related field (ocean acoustics, radar / array processing, acoustic signal processing). PhD or equivalent research experience.
- Strong command of statistical signal processing: detection & estimation theory, array processing, time-frequency analysis.
- Fluent in Python (NumPy / SciPy) for modeling, simulation and analysis; comfortable working with large datasets.
- A builder's instinct: you want your work deployed at sea, not left in a paper. Bias toward validating ideas against real data.
- Bonus: prior experience using machine learning on acoustic signals; naval / defense domain experience.
Why Pelagon
Founder-led deeptech — Aymeric (founded & exited Scortex, leading AI for manufacturing quality) and Gauthier (ex-Navy officer & McKinsey) — backed by Hexa, Europe's pioneer startup studio (35+ companies, including Front, Aircall and Spendesk). Real data, real deployments at sea, and a mission tied directly to European sovereignty.
Tell us why this mission speaks to you and what you'd bring — we read every application.