Remote Worldwide | Flexible Commitment (Part-time to Full-time) | Equity | Frequent International Field Work
About Retide
Every minute, the equivalent of a garbage truck of plastic enters the ocean.
And yet, our ability to see where that plastic is, understand how it moves, and measure the impact of removing it is still surprisingly limited.
Retide is building the intelligence infrastructure to change that.
We use AI, robotics and environmental data to help organizations better understand plastic pollution, improve recovery efforts, and create stronger evidence of environmental impact.
Our long-term vision is a world where we can understand how plastic moves through the environment, identify where intervention matters most, and measure what happens when we act.
We're a Canadian ocean-tech startup working alongside cleanup organizations and environmental partners to build and test our technology in the real world.
We're now expanding our work into autonomous aerial systems and looking for a founding engineer to help build this next part of Retide.
Where We Are Today
Retide was founded in early 2025 and is currently at the pre-seed stage.
Since then, we've moved from concept development into field testing and validation, while building the partnerships and market access needed to bring our technology into the real world.
Today:
- We're part of Canada's leading AI, climate-tech and ocean innovation ecosystems, including NextAI, Foresight Canada and the Ocean Startup Project
- We've established partnerships with key stakeholders across the plastic recovery and plastic credit ecosystem globaly.
- We've built relationships and early distribution channels that give us access to cleanup operators, field environments and potential users of our technology
- We're working with environmental, research and industry partners across Canada, Germany, Brazil and Southeast Asia
- We've begun collecting real-world beach and drone data alongside cleanup organizations
- Retide was recognized among Scale AI's 2025 Top 100 AI Startups in Canada
We have the partnerships, field access and early market pathways. Now we're building the technology and technical team to turn that into something real.
The Role
We're looking for a 'Founding Computer Vision & Perception Engineer' to lead the development of Retide's aerial perception capabilities.
You'll work at the intersection of computer vision, machine learning, robotics and environmental sensing to explore how AI can transform aerial data into useful intelligence about plastic pollution.
You'll take ownership of Retide's computer vision and perception work, building on what we've developed so far and helping shape where it goes next. You'll work with real-world data, develop and test models, and take them into the field to understand how they perform outside the lab.
You'll have significant influence over Retide's AI architecture, datasets and technical direction.
What You'll Work On
In the first few months, you'll likely be:
- Building initial detection and segmentation models from our existing drone and beach imagery datasets
- Traveling to Brazil, west-coast Canada or Southeast Asia for at least one field deployment, working directly alongside cleanup partners
- Helping us decide where to build custom architectures versus adapt existing ones — especially for small-object detection in complex, cluttered environments
Beyond that, the role spans the full perception stack: multimodal sensor fusion, real-time and edge AI, model uncertainty and human-in-the-loop systems, and active learning as our datasets grow. You'll work closely with our robotics and software team to treat perception as part of an entire sensing system, not just a model train
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