Director, Commercial

San Francisco, CA / Hybrid | Full-time

About Ulysses

Ulysses is the ocean company. We design, manufacture, and operate autonomous vehicles for surface and subsea operations — taking on the most critical tasks across defense, commercial, and scientific missions. Our vertically integrated platform includes Mako, a modular AUV with 72-hour endurance and more onboard compute than any vehicle in its class; Leviathan, an autonomous surface vessel mothership; and Kraken, our automated launch-and-recovery system that closes the loop between surface and subsea with zero human intervention.

The ocean covers 71% of the Earth's surface and drives a $2.6 trillion global economy, yet it remains the least monitored domain on the planet. We're changing that — building autonomous systems that collapse the cost of ocean operations by orders of magnitude so that persistent coverage becomes the baseline, not the exception. We operate globally today across defense, ocean science, and commercial survey, working with partners including the U.S. Navy, the Government of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in San Francisco, Ulysses has raised $48 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Booz Allen Ventures, Harpoon Ventures, Pebblebed, Lowercarbon Capital, and others. Our team is lean, hands-on, and fast — we prototype in the shop, test on the water, and ship. If you want to work at the frontier, there's no frontier bigger than the ocean.

Your Job: Stand up and lead our commercial business unit.

You will own near-term revenue and build the commercial motion for our offshore survey and monitoring business. You will open and close deals yourself, design the offers, and install a repeatable system that scales after Series A. You will set a strategy for entering the market and execute it day to day. Think big and get hands-on with pitches, scoping, and BD. You will run this business unit end-to-end, including hiring and informing product development.

What you will do

• Originate, qualify, and close paid pilots and multi-site MSAs across ports and harbors, offshore wind nearshore and cable landfalls, dredging and marine construction, subsea cables, and environmental services.

• Design offers that move customers from measurement to ongoing monitoring to targeted action—example: baseline map, recurring monitoring, and call-out interventions.

• Build v1 pricing, discount guardrails, and a rate card for day rates and per-kilometer menus with site minimums.

• Partner with product and operations to translate buyer problems into scoped missions, SLAs, and executable plans.

• Work with marketing to produce crisp sales collateral: capability deck, three ICP one-pagers, and early case studies.

• Recruit the first AE once the motion is working. Mentor for quota ownership and discipline.

You are

• Commercial ocean native. You know how offshore survey work is scoped, awarded, and run. You have lived nearshore realities like weather, coverage, QA/QC, mobilization, and permitting.

• Technically fluent. You can discuss coverage, bathymetry requirements, payload tradeoffs, mission planning, launch and recovery, power budgets, and data delivery without a translator.

• Founder mindset. You act like an owner, design offers, protect margin, and run toward ambiguity.

• 0 to 1 builder. You have experience starting a business unit from scratch.

• More than a salesperson. You can architect deals, shape product, and build the system that others will scale.

Helpful backgrounds

• High performers from fast-moving maritime or survey startups where you personally carried a number. Examples: Saildrone, Bedrock, Terradepth, Sea-Kit, XOCEAN, Ocean Infinity commercial lines.

• Builders inside incumbents such as Fugro, EGS, Acteon, Jan De Nul, Van Oord, Boskalis, or Subsea 7 who would prefer a faster-paced work environment.

Reporting, location and compensation

• Reports to the President and Co-founder. Works closely with the CEO and CTO.

• Location negotiable. Ideally, San Francisco with frequent travel to customer sites. A hybrid from another hub is possible if it's close to key accounts, with regular travel to SF HQ.

• Compensation will be a generous combination of salary, performance-based bonus, and equity.