Electrical Systems Architecture Engineer

Computing is hungry for electricity. AI and the cloud consume it faster than land-based grids can supply it. On land, data centres are hitting three walls: available power, freshwater and land.

CIRCEO chose to head offshore. Founded in Nantes in 2025, the company designs autonomous energy ships: hulls carrying wind turbines that harvest the open-ocean wind, stronger and steadier than on land, and power on-board servers cooled directly by seawater. No grid connection, no freshwater draw, no land take.

Behind the project are three founders with a proven track record: Fabien Bardinet (former COO of Aldebaran Robotics, former CEO of Balyo, former VP at Airbus), Boris Morinière (CEA, Airbus) and Michel Soubrier (twenty years at Naval Group, from nuclear submarines to shipyard production).

The roadmap is concrete: a demonstrator, a 16-metre trimaran, with construction starting in late 2026 and launch in 2027, then an 80-metre ship, currently in preliminary design, the first of a fleet built for series production.

CIRCEO is now hiring its first team: the people who will commit everything to opening a territory no one has explored yet. Around twenty people, each working directly with the founders, each owning their system end to end.

The culture taking shape fits in a few words: enthusiasm, shared intelligence and a diverse team, drawn from energy, naval, computing and beyond. Stimulating, brilliant people, maybe a little crazy in places, and genuinely electrifying when they come together around the same problem. Here, we ship machines, not slide decks, and the sea has the final say: every assumption will be measured there.

Want to see more? Dive into the project at www.circeo.earth and explore every open position on the Careers page: www.circeo.earth/careers.

To design the electrical architecture of its first ship, CIRCEO is hiring its:

Electrical Systems Architecture Engineer

New position – Permanent contract (CDI), based in Nantes, France

Reporting to Boris Morinière, CTO, you own the ship's complete electrical architecture. It is an energy path no one has mapped yet: from the wind turbine's generator to the on-board servers, through high-voltage DC distribution and battery storage.

1. Move from the broad outline to the detail

The architecture has been sketched in broad strokes. It is up to you to define it in detail: distribution, energy storage, protection coordination, earthing system. You size, you make the trade-offs and you source components from suppliers.

2. Build the test benches and confront your choices with reality

You design, develop and run the test facilities: an iron bird to physically validate the whole chain, coupled with electrotechnical models in Simulink. The first bench may surprise you: it is built around an electric car with its wheels removed. You power up, you deliberately trigger a fault, and you measure which protection trips first.

3. Bring the behavioural model to life

You contribute to the behavioural model of the electrical architecture, working closely with the control, wind and on-board computing teams. Your network has to cope with power that follows the wind, not the demand.

An engineer in electrical engineering, electrotechnics or power electronics, you have 5 to 10 years of experience. High-power electricity is your home ground: you have already powered up your own designs.

·        How you work matters more than where you come from. Naval, wind, large-scale solar, electric vehicles, offshore racing or industry: what interests us is your ability to instrument, measure and confront your choices with physical reality.

·        You are a field engineer more than a design-office engineer. Drawing the cabinet is not enough for you: you want to commission it, and see it fault at the moment you decided.

·        DC distribution, storage, protections and earthing systems are part of your everyday vocabulary. Modelling in Simulink, or an equivalent tool, is familiar to you or appeals to you.

·        You build on proven foundations rather than intuition. AI (Claude, Gemini or another) is already one of your tools, to explore options, check a calculation or multiply your thinking.

·        English is the team's working language. You speak it fluently, including in fast-paced spoken exchanges.

Above all, and this is the founders' first criterion, you are passionate. About energy, the sea or anything else, it does not matter, as long as it is genuine. Curious in life as in your work, you enjoy stepping outside your scope, and you come to meetings with solutions rather than a list of problems.

Joining CIRCEO means designing an electrical network that exists nowhere else, and watching it power servers in the middle of the ocean. It means working in a small team where your choices are visible and measured, and laying the technical foundations of an entire fleet.

Do you recognise yourself in this description, and does the idea of triggering a fault for a good cause make you smile? Then apply under the reference #HighVoltage

Salary and benefits

·        Salary: shaped around your background and what you bring to the founding team. We discuss it openly from our very first conversation.

Process and inclusion

·        1/ With L'Etincelle RH: a phone call + an interview (supported by tools and tests to understand you more finely)

·        2/ With CIRCEO: meetings with at least two of the three founders, Fabien Bardinet (CEO), Boris Morinière (CTO) and Michel Soubrier (COO), plus a technical case study

Interviews can be held in English or French.

The position is open now with a start as soon as possible : it is one of the most urgent in the first team. If you have a notice period, let's talk, we can work with it.

Gender diversity is a deliberate goal at CIRCEO: applications from women engineers are particularly welcome.

L'Etincelle RH stands for companies open to diversity and difference. Non-discrimination is second nature to us: you can count on our objectivity.