---
title: 'Field Test Engineer  (Copy) at Albacore'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/field-test-engineer-copy-albacore-philadelphia-v5cz8kay9qm7'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-26'
---

# Field Test Engineer  (Copy) at Albacore

- **Company:** Albacore
- **Location:** Philadelphia, PA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-26
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/albacore/am9icG9zdDqmlV3zRfagpLHA-LLtmh4C

## Job description

## About the Team

Albacore is bringing our passion to innovation in the subsea domain, and we are looking to add a Field Test Technician to join the Ghostfin Field Operations team.. The Field Test Technician owns the physical logistics, safety, and readiness of the vehicle every time it goes in the water including transport, launch, and recovery. This is a hands-on, no-shortcuts role for someone who takes real pride in doing things the right way.

## What you'll do

- Prepare the UUV and support equipment for field exercises, including staging, loading, and rigging for transport
- Operate and tow the support vessel and trailer to and from test sites, including trailer handling, dock line work, and small-boat operation
- Support daily launch and recovery operations, working 1:1 with the Field Test Engineer on every deployment
- Conduct pre- and post-operation visual inspections of the vehicle and flag anything that looks off before it becomes a problem
- Maintain strict accountability for the physical safety of the vehicle throughout transport, staging, and testing
- Assist with day-to-day test operations and help capture accurate operational records, as we’ll be in the water most weekdays to progressively mature the platform
- Travel to support field testing and, as needed, customer site operations

## Qualifications

- Comfortable and confident working on the water — driving a boat, towing a trailer, handling dock lines, and generally at ease around marine equipment
- A strong, demonstrated sense of ownership — someone who's genuinely careful, not reactive, about protecting expensive, sensitive equipment
- Mature, dependable, and direct — a no-excuses person who does what they say they'll do without being managed closely
- Willing to be hands-on and outdoors in a range of conditions, not looking for a desk job
- Ability to lift and maneuver equipment up to 50 lbs
- Travel from 25-50%, including overseas travel as needed

## Preferred Qualifications

- General boating license, or significant recreational time on the water (boating, fishing, or similar)
- Prior military, maritime trades, or longshoreman-type work — any background with real physical accountability for equipment or vessels
- Experience working alongside engineers or technicians on a testing or maintenance team
- Experience with UUV/AUV/ROV equipment is a great plus

## About Albacore

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Albacore Inc. builds mass-producible, long-range autonomous drone submarines (unmanned underwater vehicles) designed to support military operators with ocean-spanning, scalable undersea missions.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
- **Founded**: 2025
- **Founders**: John Huddleston (Co-Founder, mechanical engineer & unmanned systems expert) and Dante Vaisbort (Co-Founder, second-time defense founder, previously founded Haylon Technologies)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Defense and Space Manufacturing — specifically autonomous underwater vehicles (UUVs) / drone submarines
- **Target customers**: B2G — U.S. Navy, Special Operations Forces, intelligence community, allied foreign militaries; also open to commercial entities with undersea needs
- **Mission**: Build the next generation of unmanned underwater vehicles to prevent maritime invasions and provide asymmetric undersea dominance at scale

## Products & Services
- **Ghostfin (Expeditionary Drone Submarine)**: A 6-foot autonomous underwater vehicle designed for mass production and long-range deployment. Specs: 102 in base length, 12.75 in outer diameter, 425 lbs dry weight, 200 lbs max payload, 1,000 nautical mile range (10x greater than comparable vehicles), 30-day endurance. It is scalable (built from commercial off-the-shelf components), modular (configurable mission modules for survey, logistics, and strike), persistent (longer transit/loiter via novel energy storage and propulsion), and autonomous (embedded analytics and navigational software). Capable of rapidly launching from boats, piers, or beaches; supports persistent undersea sensing, observation, and communication, and can deliver kinetic strike effects across ocean distances. Also supports swarm deployment and high-bandwidth data relay to support vessels.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $6.6M ($6,625,000) across 2 seed rounds
- **Funding History**:
  - Seed Round (June 2025): $125,000, 1 investor
  - Seed Round (September 2025): $6.5M, 15 investors
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (led), Outlander VC (led)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount: 25 employees, with +3.6% monthly growth
  - Team talent sources include Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Boston Consulting Group, and the University of Pennsylvania
  - Founding team has led >$9B in unmanned systems manufacturing/procurement efforts (Huddleston) and >$10M in DoD contract efforts (Vaisbort)
  - Actively hiring for Mechanical, Software, and Electrical Engineering roles

## Competitive Advantages
- **10x range advantage**: Ghostfin offers 1,000 nautical miles of transit distance versus other vehicles of comparable size
- **Mass-producibility**: Designed from widely available commercial off-the-shelf components requiring minimal specialized machinery — a key cost and scale advantage
- **Modular architecture**: Configurable mission modules enable rapid maintenance, upgrade pathways, and mission-specific payloads (survey, logistics, strike)
- **Experienced team**: Engineering heritage includes Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, and Johnson & Johnson; combined 20+ years in space flight technology, autonomous vehicle AI, medical robotics, and robo-submarine competitions
- **Founder track record**: Repeat defense founder with existing DoD relationships and active company (Haylon Technologies) in the autonomous power space

## Strategic Focus
- **Go-to-market**: Deliver solutions to the Navy, Special Operations Forces, intelligence community, and allied foreign militaries; also exploring commercial applications
- **Product priorities**: Continued development of Ghostfin's energy storage and propulsion technology to maintain the endurance/range edge; expanding modular payload capabilities for strike, logistics, and survey missions
- **At-scale deployment**: Emphasizing swarm operations, rapid launch from minimal infrastructure, and ocean-wide autonomous precision effects
- **Manufacturing**: Building out supply chain and production capabilities for true mass production of undersea systems

## Why Work Here
- **High-impact defense mission**: Directly contribute to national security and maritime defense with a young, mission-driven team
- **Early-stage ownership**: Join post-seed, pre-scale startup (25 employees) where engineers have outsized influence on product and architecture
- **Location**: Based in Philadelphia, PA
- **Open roles**: Mechanical Engineer, Software Engineer, Electrical Engineer (plus past openings for Powertrain Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Head of Supply Chain, and internships)
- **Technical culture**: Hands-on work spanning robotics, AI, propulsion, battery systems, manufacturing, and defense contracting — a broad, fast-paced engineering environment
- **Backing**: Y Combinator-backed with meaningful seed funding to support growth

## Sources
1. [albacore.inc](https://www.albacore.inc/)
2. [albacore.inc/careers](https://www.albacore.inc/careers)
3. [jobs.gem.com](https://jobs.gem.com/albacore)
4. [linkedin.com/company/albacore-inc](https://www.linkedin.com/company/albacore-inc)
5. [ycombinator.com/companies/albacore-inc](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/albacore-inc)

## Other roles at Albacore

- [Senior Electrical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-electrical-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-vy3f9zsb0rz9) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Business Operations Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/business-operations-associate-albacore-philadelphia-vckesqh4fgn9) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Field Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/field-test-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-wqvsm8xnkkyg) — Philadelphia, PA
- [IT Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/it-lead-albacore-philadelphia-93cdp2m8db7c) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Powertrain Engineer, Internal Combustion Engines](https://feeny.ai/job/powertrain-engineer-internal-combustion-engines-albacore-philadelphia-8cz2apq6ry3g) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Supply Chain Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-manager-albacore-philadelphia-x25q8k1skrqh) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Software Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineering-intern-albacore-philadelphia-r9qnyvtza79f) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-ynn2pfwcerfj) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Mechanical Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineering-intern-albacore-philadelphia-b5q800psm3pw) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-s272xzw90st7) — Philadelphia, PA