Forward Deployed Engineer, Chile

Be OctaPulse on the ground in southern Chile. Install, run and improve our vision systems on salmon farms and in processing plants, fix hardware and software on site, and bring what you learn straight back to our engineering team.

OctaPulse builds computer vision and robotics for aquaculture. Our systems measure fish on the farm, count and follow every piece on processing lines, and turn it into data that teams use every day. Chile is one of the largest salmon producers in the world, and much of its most important work still runs on manual sampling, clipboards and spreadsheets.

You will be our engineer in Chile. From Puerto Montt, you will travel to farms, hatcheries and processing plants across the south of the country to install our systems, keep them running and make them better. When something breaks at a site, you are the person who understands both the hardware and the software well enough to fix it, often the same day.

This is a forward deployed role: part engineer, part trusted partner to the people who run the sites. You will spend time with plant managers, quality teams and farm crews, learn how the work is really done, and turn what they need into changes our team can ship. You will write code, change configurations and ship fixes yourself.

You will work closely with our hardware and software engineers in Dallas and report to our CTO. Expect frequent travel within southern Chile, often to remote sites, and occasional trips to Dallas. Fluent Spanish is required: most of your day will be in Spanish with site teams, and in English with ours.

What you'll build

• Installs that go right the first time. Plan and lead installs at new sites: survey the space, mount and seal cameras and housings, run power and network, calibrate, and hand over a system that works. Then write down what you learned, so the next install is faster and needs fewer people.
• Systems that stay up. Own uptime for every site in Chile. Watch devices remotely, catch problems before the site does, and fix them: remotely when you can, on site when you must. Trace every failure to a root cause and feed it back to hardware and software.
• Software that fits the site. Debug and patch our software in the field: device setup, networking, data flows, dashboards and connections to the tools sites already use. Ship small fixes yourself and turn bigger ones into clear, reproducible issues for the team.
• Better data from real fish. Help collect and check the images and labels that keep our measurements accurate on real fish, in real light, on real lines. Notice when results drift, and help find out why.
• The voice of the site. Train operators and quality teams in Spanish, run regular reviews with site managers, and bring back what they ask for. You will shape what we build next, from new measurements on the farm to what our robots need on the line.

You might be

• Fluent in Spanish and comfortable working in English. You can explain a technical problem to a plant manager in Spanish and write it up for engineers in English.
• An engineer who has deployed and supported real systems outside an office: in plants, on farms, in mines, on ships, in factories or in the field.
• Comfortable with both hardware and software: Linux, networking, Python and scripting on one side; power, cabling, connectors, cameras and sensors on the other.
• A calm, methodical debugger. When a system fails at a remote site, you work out whether it is power, network, hardware, software or the setup, and you fix the right thing.
• Someone people trust. You show up when you say you will, you tell site teams the truth about what works, and you follow through.
• Happy to work on your own at a site for days at a time, and fine with cold, wet, loud and early mornings. Salmon farms and processing plants are not offices.
• Based in or willing to move to Puerto Montt, legally able to work in Chile, and holding a valid driver's license. Willing to travel often within southern Chile and occasionally to the US.

Bonus

• Experience in salmon farming, aquaculture, fish processing or food production, especially in Chile.
• Camera or computer vision experience: lighting, exposure, lenses and calibration.
• Experience with remote sites, industrial networks, or slow and unreliable connections.
• You have trained operators or led customer onboarding.
• Experience in hygienic or washdown environments and with food safety rules.
• At ease on boats and floating structures.

Details

Location: Puerto Montt, Chile Workplace: On-site and in the field Type: Full-time

Interview Process

1. We read every application ourselves.
2. If there is a fit: a 30-minute call with a founder.
3. A technical conversation about real work, yours and ours.
4. We reply to everyone, either way.