Role overview
As a Senior AI/ML Engineer, you will apply machine learning to real-world underwater acoustic sensing challenges using Optics11’s fiber-optic technology platforms. You will work closely with acoustics engineers, signal-processing specialists, and embedded/software teams to develop robust ML components that integrate seamlessly into operational systems.
This role requires a strong foundation in signal processing, applied mathematics, and statistics, and the ability to combine physics-based acoustic algorithms with data-driven ML methods.
What you'll work on
- Develop and implement machine learning solutions for underwater acoustic sensing use cases, including detection, classification, localization and anomaly monitoring within fiber-optic sensing systems.
- Select and adapt modelling approaches based on data availability, operational constraints and system requirements.
- Apply strong foundations in applied mathematics, statistics and signal processing (e.g., beamforming, spectral analysis, detection pipelines) and integrate these with modern data-driven ML techniques.
- Design, train, evaluate and benchmark AI/ML models, ensuring robustness, generalization and deployment readiness.
- Validate models rigorously across laboratory experiments and offshore field datasets, with clear performance tracking and reproducible experimentation.
- Analyze and interpret large-scale experimental and real-world fiber-optic sensing datasets, contributing to scalable workflows for data preparation, labelling and augmentation.
- Support technical trade-offs between accuracy, interpretability, latency and real-time or embedded constraints.
- Collaborate closely with acoustics engineers, signal processing specialists, software and embedded teams to integrate ML components into operational acoustic sensing pipelines.
- Translate complex AI/ML results into clear technical insights that inform system-level engineering decisions.
- Contribute to strong engineering practices, including version-controlled experiments, documentation, traceability, validation standards and continuous improvement of ML components.
- Stay informed about advances in AI/ML for time-series analysis, sensor fusion and signal-informed learning, and prototype promising approaches that complement the broader technology stack.
What we're looking for
- Experience with underwater acoustics, sonar, or beamforming-related applications.
- Knowledge of embedded or real-time deployment constraints.
- Experience with sensor fusion, self-supervised learning, or physics-informed ML.
- Familiarity with offshore, defense, or industrial monitoring domains.
- Familiarity with structured ML development processes such as CRISP-ML(Q) or similar lifecycle and quality frameworks.
You'll be working with clients in the defense and security sectors, obtaining a Certificate of No Objection issued by the AIVD (Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service) is mandatory. This means you will need to undergo a security screening. For more information, please refer to details on security screening.