Naval 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 bring its first ship to life, CIRCEO is hiring its:

Naval Engineer

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

Reporting to Michel Soubrier, COO, you are the guardian of CIRCEO's naval architecture. Detailed design is carried out with a partner naval design office. Your role: steer that design, make it converge with the needs of every on-board system, and carry it through to the shipyard.

1. Steer the design with the partner design office

You provide technical oversight of the design office, where you spend around two days a week. You check that the choices hold up and that investments are put to good use. You remain accountable for the whole, including what the partner designs.

2. Take the 16-metre trimaran all the way to launch

You coordinate the design office, suppliers and the building yard, from the studies to the launch. With a sharp sense of the sea, you handle the surprises of the build and you make the call when it is needed.

3. Marinise what has never been to sea

Wind turbine, power electronics, computer servers: you lead the marinisation of the on-board systems. In particular, you design the seawater cooling loops of the computing module.

Next, you will be at the heart of the naval studies for the 80-metre ship.

You have 5 to 10 years of experience in naval engineering, and you know shipyard life from the inside. Being a qualified naval architect is not mandatory, although that background would be very welcome: what counts is your real command of naval architecture.

·        Your shipyard experience lets you project a design into the reality of its construction, and see the surprises coming before they arrive.

·        You know how to work with a partner without handing over responsibility. You challenge, you check, you build together.

·        Naval design office, major shipyard or series boatbuilding: your career has taught you to own your choices with boldness and pragmatism.

·        You build on proven foundations rather than intuition. AI (Claude, Gemini or another) is already one of your tools, to explore options, check your reasoning 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 the sea, building 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 a problem on the yard makes you want to look for the solution first.

Joining CIRCEO means launching a boat with no equivalent, then designing the next one, five times longer. It means holding the technical helm of a project where naval, energy and computing finally share the same deck.

Do you recognise yourself in this description, and are surprises on the yard part of the job for you rather than bad news? Then apply under the reference #ShipHappens

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 : construction of the demonstrator starts in late 2026. 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.