Field Service Engineer — Customer & Technical Liaison

Location: Virginia Beach (3-5 days per week)
Travel: 60 -70%

About Terradepth

Terradepth is building the next generation of ocean technology by combining autonomous maritime hardware, software, data, and AI into an integrated Ocean Operating System. We work with government and commercial customers to solve complex problems in challenging environments.

The Role

We are looking for a Field Service Engineer with startup experience who can serve as a critical bridge between our customers and internal teams. This person will spend significant time with our customers, understanding how they use our hardware and software, identifying issues and opportunities, and ensuring feedback is translated into clear actions across Engineering, Product, Project Management, Operations, and Sales.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys being close to the customer and the technology. You will participate in customer calls, support deployments and field activities, help troubleshoot technical issues, and ensure customer needs are understood and acted upon internally.

What You'll Do

• Act as a technical liaison between Terradepth and our customers.
• Participate in sales and customer calls to provide technical context and capture customer requirements.
• Listen carefully to customers and translate feedback into clear, actionable internal requirements.
• Maintain strong relationships with customers throughout the sales, deployment, and ongoing support lifecycle.
• Support field deployments, demonstrations, testing, and troubleshooting of Terradepth hardware and software.
• Work closely with Engineering and Product to communicate product issues, feature requests, and technical requirements.
• Work with Project Management to track customer commitments, issues, and deliverables.
• Work with Sales to ensure customer expectations and technical capabilities remain aligned.
• Help identify recurring customer issues and opportunities for product or process improvements.
• Provide feedback on product usability, reliability, documentation, training, and operational workflows.
• Own the customer service record: onsite reports, build runbook and triage playbook updates, and customer training.
• Help establish repeatable processes for capturing, prioritizing, and communicating customer feedback.
• Be willing to get hands-on with hardware, software, vehicles, sensors, and field equipment when required, including Linux/Proxmox hosts, Windows Server guests, BMC/IPMI, and network configuration on air-gapped customer sites.

What We're Looking For

• 5–10 years of experience in field engineering, systems engineering, technical support, solutions engineering, or a similar role.
• Government/DoD or federal contracting experience with active clearance (TS-SCI preferred).
• Experience working in an early-stage, fast-moving company where you have had to operate across functions and solve problems without a lot of structure.
• Strong technical understanding of both hardware and software systems.
• Excellent customer-facing and communication skills.
• Strong technical communication skills—you can explain complex systems to engineers, operators, executives, and customers.
• Comfortable getting hands-on with technology rather than simply presenting slides.
• Ability to listen to a customer problem, understand the underlying issue, and communicate it effectively to engineers and internal teams.
• Comfortable participating in sales conversations without being a traditional salesperson.
• Comfortable troubleshooting technical problems in the field.
• Ability to prioritize competing customer needs and communicate clearly about commitments and timelines.
• Willingness to travel regularly for customer meetings, demonstrations, deployments, and field operations.

Particularly Valuable

• Technical degree in engineering, computer science, robotics, oceanography, or a related field.
• Linux systems administration (hypervisors, networking, remote management), Windows Server, and hydrographic survey tooling (like SonarWiz, Qimera, CARIS).
• Experience with UUVs/AUVs, maritime systems, robotics, autonomy, sensors, sonar, or oceanographic technology.
• Experience supporting government, defense, or commercial maritime customers.
• Experience working directly with engineers to scope integrations and new capabilities.
• Experience supporting a deployed software platform through upgrades, offline/air-gapped operation, and customer data ingest and hand-back (Absolute Ocean).
• Experience supporting complex hardware/software integrations.
• Military, maritime, engineering, or technical field operations experience.

What Success Looks Like

• Customers see you as a trusted technical partner.
• Sales has a technically capable person who can help move customer conversations forward.
• Engineering and Product receive clear, actionable customer feedback rather than disconnected requests.
• Project Management has visibility into customer issues, commitments, and priorities.
• Customer issues are identified and resolved quickly.
• Product and Engineering better understand how customers actually use Terradepth's technology.

This is a startup growth role. We are looking for someone who is comfortable being in the field one day, on a customer call the next, troubleshooting an appliance, vehicle, or software issue the next, and then sitting with Engineering to explain what the customer actually needs. You don't need to have all the answers; however, you need to know how to listen, solve problems, and make sure the right people have the information they need. 

We care about our team's well-being. We offer a competitive benefits package that includes comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance, plus a 401(k) retirement plan.