A deep tech venture · Gdańsk · 2026
DeepMelon Technologies is the commercial vehicle building the engineering. Dolphin Democracy — the Friend who knows us well — holds the broader mission: charitable activity, public engagement, and the long-term advocacy work that doesn't fit inside a commercial venture but is essential to the field.
Both are part of the same architecture. Both are needed.
Protect the environment. Study and learn about the species we do not yet fully understand. Communicate with them, responsibly. Each step makes the next one possible — and each is a product in its own right.
Listening stations that stand watch over the sea’s natural assets and record what lives there and what we do to it. Protection first — and the data that everything else is built on.
Supervised stations at known sites, built on years of listening, to study species we have yet to understand — alongside the researchers who know them best, and at the animals’ pace.
A device for wonder, not utility. First in the hands of ocean guardians — the dive professionals who role-model how to be near wild animals — then divers and snorkellers, with training. Worth having only in an ocean we have protected.
We’re at TRL 2. Concept formulated, technological path still to be drawn. These are the open questions we’re sitting with — the territory a founding CTO will help chart. Some of them are research-frontier hard. We know.
Financial and strategic architect — builds the inner and outer structures that let people grow and thrive with the business.
Chartered Professional Accountant from Toronto, Canada. Fifteen-plus years across private equity, M&A, institutional funders, complex cross-border transactions and the operating finance work that makes scale possible. Has led finance through transactions and growth well beyond DeepMelon’s current scale. A relationship builder and dealmaker.
Builds the institutional framework serious deep tech requires: corporate structure, capital strategy, grant compliance, IP architecture, investor and stakeholder relations. The kind of foundation a founding CTO can trust and stop thinking about.
A deep thinker and continuous learner who loves hard problems, now deepening her command of intellectual property and new technologies law through postgraduate study. The kind of person who reads the regulation, asks why it exists, and figures out how to build something better inside or around it.
Also: 450+ dives across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Great Lakes. The technology gets field-tested by someone who has lived underwater.
We’re looking for a founding CTO driven to lead conscious technological advancement — to build ocean defence today and, over the long run, the fun, explorative, open-science instruments that follow. Someone whose heart is in the right place, and who is not afraid of the challenge of building a company that will employ generations of engineering talent.
A builder of enterprises, not only of science. A people leader who can inspire technological marvels in a team, hold the vision and the mission through the currents, and make it work in the actual ocean. Highly motivated, driven to succeed — someone who will see their own success in DeepMelon’s and be moved by the growth of what they own in it.
Deep technical roots in underwater sensing, embedded systems or marine engineering are the entry ticket; commercial drive and the will to lead are what the seat is for. You’ll co-define the strategy, own the product end-to-end, and build the team.
Pomerania-based or willing to relocate. Founder-level equity. Mission alignment matters more than résumé.
deepmelon@pm.me // we read every message
A leader in underwater acoustics and multidomain sensing for 45+ years. Full Professor and Strategic Communications Director, Centre for Geophysical Forecasting, NTNU.
Led experiments over 1,000 days at sea, across the world’s ocean basins and both polar regions. Pioneered ambient noise imaging and AI detection of marine mammal calls; established JANUS, the first digital underwater communications protocol. Founded the Acoustic Research Laboratory and co-founded the Tropical Marine Science Institute in Singapore.
Joint Honours in Maths and Physics and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography, Cambridge. Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II, Singapore Defence Science and NATO Scientific Achievement awards. Life Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of MTS, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, Associate Editor for JOE and JASA, International Fellow of The Explorers Club.
Sailed the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans twice, between contracts for universities, research centres and NATO. In 2004, a family ‘Seabbatical’ around the Indian Ocean: a sponsored voyage of research, outreach and education for ocean stewardship.
Also: PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer. It is no longer true that he neither owns nor operates a television.