--- title: 'Embedded System Lead Engineer at Hexa' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/embedded-system-lead-engineer-hexa-france-2yyg4mg11fp9' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-18' --- # Embedded System Lead Engineer at Hexa - **Company:** Hexa - **Location:** France - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-12 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-18 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/hexa/a3577eb6-105e-4675-98f5-5a4d23c16275/application **Skills:** Embedded systems, Electronics design, Power systems, Motor/actuator control, Sensor integration, Microcontrollers, Embedded Linux, Firmware development, Autopilot ecosystems, Pixhawk, ArduPilot, ArduSub, PX4, Edge AI/ML deployment, Embedded inference, GPU/NPU/TPU accelerators, Model quantization, Model optimization, Mechanical engineering, Mechatronics > Lead end-to-end technical ownership of hardware, electronics, and embedded stacks for autonomous maritime platforms. Design edge-AI compute architectures, manage power systems, and conduct sea trials to deploy reliable underwater surveillance nodes. ## Job description Pelagon - Autonomous Maritime ISR Full-time · On-site (Marseille or Paris) · Founding team · Reports to founders The sea is the physical layer of the economy—the conduit for our energy, communications, and trade. It is also Europe’s exposed flank. Pelagon is building the answer. Founded by [Aymeric](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adepontbriand/?locale=en) (serial deeptech entrepreneur; founded & exited Scortex, Leading AI solution for manufacturing quality) and [Gauthier](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauthier-bouxin/?locale=en) (Navy officer and McKinsey), Pelagon is building a foundational multimodal acoustic model for autonomous maritime protection (underwater and surface) in service of European sovereignty. It will be deployed on a distributed, autonomous network of vectors (UUVs, buoys, sailbuoys, seabed…) to provide real-time understanding of underwater threats. France and Europe have world-class acoustic engineers and a long history in underwater warfare. By bridging this expertise with modern physical-AI strategies (as seen in autonomous driving and robotics). Europe is still missing it’s naval NeoPrime, Pelagon aims to become to lead the way in autonomous marine protection—from detection to interception—partnering with leading navies, primes, and neo-primes, while also operating its own fleet as a service. Pelagon is backed by [Hexa](http://hexa.cc/), the pioneer startup studio in Europe, which has launched 35+ companies, including unicorns like Front, Aircall, and Spendesk, combining €230m+ ARR and €750m raised. ## The role As Embedded System Lead Engineer, you take end-to-end technical ownership of the hardware, electronics, and embedded stack across a small family of autonomous maritime platforms, some operating on the surface, some beneath it. What they share matters more than what sets them apart: each must persist at sea for long stretches, sense its surroundings, run our AI on-device, and report back intelligently — all while surviving a brutal environment on a very tight energy budget. You will lead their technical development, from architecture and component selection through bring-up, integration, sea trials, and iteration. You'll set the engineering bar for the platforms team and shape how we build for years to come. These platforms exist to carry one thing into the water: our AI. Pelagon trains high-performance detection models in-house on its own stack, and those models have to run on-device, at the edge, on a razor-thin power budget — then push results back to our operations center. Designing the compute-and-power architecture that makes this possible is the heart of the role. The mandate is simple and uncompromising: get reliable hardware in the water fast, and start collecting data. Every week of persistent at-sea operation compounds. The hardware is the gate to all of it. ## What you'll own - Common system architecture across the platforms: power, sensing, compute, and communications. - The edge-AI compute platform — selecting and integrating the processors and accelerators that run our in-house detection models on-device, and extracting maximum inference from every milliwatt. - Electronics design and integration — power distribution, battery systems, motor/thruster control, sensor interfaces (acoustic, pressure, IMU, GNSS, AIS). - The embedded software and autopilot stack, firmware, and the low-level glue that makes autonomy reliable in a brutal, wet, salty environment. - Robustness and efficiency engineering: watertight integrity, power budgets and endurance, thermal behaviour, EMC, and graceful failure modes far from shore. - Hands-on bring-up and sea trials — you'll be on the dock and on the boat, not just at the bench. - Vendor and component decisions, and the build-up of our test and manufacturing practices as we scale from prototype to fielded units. The hard problems you'll be solving These are genuinely difficult, and that's the point: - Persistence with a finite power budget. Endurance is everything for a surveillance node — squeezing weeks of useful operation out of a sealed, ship-deployable platform is a relentless optimization problem across power, compute, and duty-cycling. - Reliability with no one to fix it. A system at sea has to fail safe and recover on its own. There is no field technician at 30 nm offshore in a 2 m swell. - Running real AI at the edge, on almost no power. This is the defining challenge of the role. Our in-house models have to run inference on-device, in real time, on platforms with a razor-thin energy budget — then sense, sleep, and wake intelligently to stretch endurance from hours into weeks. Getting high-performance ML to live within milliwatts is what makes the entire system possible. - Sensing in a hostile medium. The ocean fights you at every turn — pressure, corrosion, biofouling, acoustic noise, intermittent comms — and the hardware has to keep sensing and computing through all of it. - Speed without fragility. We are building fast toward sea trials, but a demonstrator that breaks doesn't generate data. You'll have to find the line between moving quickly and building things that survive the ocean. Who we're looking for You are a sharp, senior builder who wants to own a problem, not be handed a ticket. Specifically: - 5+ years building real, shipping hardware — embedded systems that had to be efficient, robust, and survive the real world. - Direct experience building drones or autonomous systems. This could come from drone companies (e.g. Parrot), automotive / autonomous vehicles, or the marine autonomy space. - Deep, hands-on command of the full embedded stack: electronics design, power systems, motor/actuator control, sensor integration, microcontrollers and embedded Linux, and firmware close to the metal. - Comfort with autopilot / flight-controller ecosystems (Pixhawk, ArduPilot / ArduSub / PX4 or equivalent) and the realities of real-time control. - Experience deploying AI/ML models at the edge — embedded inference, accelerators (GPU / NPU / TPU-class), model quantization and optimization, and the power-versus-performance tradeoffs that come with it. This is central to what we do. - A bias toward action: you prototype, test, break, and iterate — and you're energized by tight deadlines and a mission that genuinely matters. - Fluency working in a fast, ambiguous, founding-team environment where you define the process as much as follow it. Bonus points for: mechanical / mechatronic breadth (you can reason about hulls, sealing, and thrust as well as circuits); experience with subsea or marine hardware; comms in degraded / contested environments; CFD or hydrodynamics intuition; or having taken a hardware product from zero to fielded at scale. ## Why join now - Founding ownership. You'll be one of the first engineers and will define the technical foundation of the company. Meaningful equity comes with that. - A mission with weight. This is hardware that protects critical infrastructure and Europe's maritime space. - Real things, in the real ocean, fast. You'll see your work in the water within weeks, not years. - AI-first, at the edge, in the real world. We train our own models and run them where it counts: in the water, on the device. You'll be solving the edge-ML and power problems most companies only talk about. - A sovereign, European deeptech at the inflection point of a market with strong NATO and EU policy momentum behind it. ## About Hexa ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Hexa is a multi-stage startup studio that partners with founders to build, launch, and scale software companies from scratch. - **Entity Type**: Private (multi-stage startup studio; operates Start, Sprint, and Scale tracks) - **Headquarters**: Paris, France (12 rue Martel 75010) - **Founded**: 2011 - **Founders**: Not publicly listed as a single founder; built as a studio by a founding team. ## Core Business - Primary industry/industries: Venture Building / Startup Studio / Company Creation - Target customers: Aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs (B2B, B2C, Enterprise tech founders) - Mission or purpose statement: "To build alongside founders, not from the sidelines" – creating companies that leave a mark on the world by combining hands-on operational support with capital. ## Products & Services - **Hexa Start**: A 12-month, intensive program for entrepreneurs who want to build a company from scratch (often before they have a concrete idea). Hexa provides the idea, team, co-founder, and covers all costs until the company becomes independent. - **Hexa Sprint**: A 6-month program for founding teams who already have an idea and are looking for their first check (pre-seed). Offers €500k (€20k convertible note for 4% + €480k convertible note with MFN & cap at €8M). - **Hexa Scale**: A growth-stage program for post-product-market-fit companies ($1–10M ARR, 10–40% YoY growth). Hexa invests €5–20M per company, takes a majority stake, and provides hands-on operational support (GTM, product, AI strategy, international expansion, hiring) for 9–12 months. - **In-house Expertise**: 30+ experts in Product Design, Product Management, Engineering (via hired teams), GTM, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, People & Talent, Comms & Brand, Community, and Investing. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Combined valuation of launched companies exceeds **$5 billion**. - **Key Metric**: **50+ companies launched**; **2,600+ employees** across portfolio companies; **12 exits**. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly listed on the site, but the studio itself acts as the primary investor and operator. Portfolio includes multiple billion-dollar companies (names not publicly listed in the provided data). - **Growth Signals**: Studio has been operating since 2011 and has scaled from 0 to 50+ companies. The addition of the Scale track indicates a pivot to later-stage growth. Receives ~1,000 founder applications per year, selecting ~12 founders (2 per project) annually for the Start track. ## Competitive Advantages - **Hands-on, not hands-off**: Unlike traditional accelerators or VCs, Hexa provides a full in-house team of operators (product, design, GTM, legal, finance) working alongside founders for 12 months (Start) or 9–12 months (Scale). - **Founder-friendly majority stake**: For Scale, Hexa takes a majority stake but claims to be "the world’s most founder-friendly majority investor" – founders remain in the driver's seat with active board support. - **Proven track record**: 50+ companies, $5B combined valuation, 12 exits, spanning 12+ years of SaaS expertise. - **End-to-end platform**: Covers the entire lifecycle from idea (Start) to pre-seed (Sprint) to growth (Scale) – rare in the startup studio space. - **Built-in network & resources**: Founders get immediate access to a team of 30+ experts, legal, finance, recruiting, and a community of other founders. ## Strategic Focus - **Scaling the Scale track**: The newer Hexa Scale program is a key growth driver, targeting profitable, capital-efficient B2B SaaS companies with $1–10M ARR. - **AI & embedded finance**: Hexa Scale explicitly helps companies with AI strategy and adding fintech/embedded finance capabilities. - **International expansion**: Helping portfolio companies expand into new geographies and verticals. - **Maintaining high selectivity**: Keeping the Start track highly curated (~12 founders/year) to ensure deep support and quality outcomes. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: "You'll never build alone" – the studio emphasizes deep collaboration, ambition, humility, and execution. The team is composed of entrepreneurs and expert operators. - **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Hexa is based in Paris. For the Start track, a presence at HQ is important to benefit from resources and mentorship. Sprint is remote-friendly but based in France/Europe for events. Scale is likely remote-friendly with in-person board/partner meetings. - **Perks & Engineering Culture**: No software engineers in the core team – each startup's product is built by engineers recruited specifically for that company. This means engineers get to join a funded startup with a built-in support system from day one. The studio provides legal, finance, recruiting, and strategic support so engineers can focus on product. - **Career Path**: Two kinds of roles: (1) the core team that builds the machine (partners, product managers, designers, GTM, finance, legal) and (2) founding hires inside the startups coming out of the studio. Either way, you're in "before it exists" – a high-risk, high-reward environment with significant ownership and impact. ## Sources 1. [hexa.com](https://www.hexa.com/) 2. [hexa.com/positions](https://www.hexa.com/positions) 3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/hexa](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/hexa) 4. [hexa.com/team](https://www.hexa.com/team) 5. [hexa.com/faq](https://www.hexa.com/faq) ## Other roles at Hexa - [Staff Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-hexa-paris-2fj7mj9e7v7c) — Paris, France - [Field Application Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/field-application-engineer-hexa-paris-jc9jeae7k86b) — Paris, France - [Investment Associate @Hexa Scale](https://feeny.ai/job/investment-associate-hexa-scale-hexa-paris-ewx0msmj3x8p) — Paris, France - [Founding Sales @Hodor (backed by Hexa)](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-sales-hodor-backed-by-hexa-hexa-paris-2wryb04trbv8) — Paris, France - [Founder Associate Intern @Verso (backed by Hexa)](https://feeny.ai/job/founder-associate-intern-verso-backed-by-hexa-hexa-paris-ttwa96ehk668) — Paris, France - [Founder Associate Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/founder-associate-intern-hexa-paris-6vbwskw7ck51) — Paris, France - [Founding sales lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-sales-lead-hexa-paris-99zxdh5wra2p) — Paris, France - [VC Analyst - Internship](https://feeny.ai/job/vc-analyst-internship-hexa-paris-y542ejwvvn0k) — Paris, France - [Expert Assurance | Courtage & IA @Panora (backed by Hexa)](https://feeny.ai/job/expert-assurance-courtage-ia-panora-backed-by-hexa-hexa-paris-13vyhp18z9qb) — Paris, France - [Office and Event Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/office-and-event-manager-hexa-paris-brn9tf9jj5gw) — Paris, France