Maritime Navigation Cyber-Resilience Leader — Autonomous Harbour Systems

The mandate

The role will establish robust disagreement logic among GNSS, inertial, radar and chart inputs, ensure the autonomy stack's confidence-change telemetry is observable and auditable, and integrate adversarial-safety exposure into the vessel assurance case.

The interim starts within three weeks for twelve months, working aboard trials and across Rotterdam engineering, with monthly Antwerp or Hamburg sessions. Early weeks require daily coordination with masters, navigation engineers, harbour authorities and safety assurance before testing resumes. A permanent search begins after independent sea-trial assurance; six weeks of overlap are planned, with extension possible only when certification timing crosses the agreed transfer date.

Handover requires trusted-source and disagreement controls, exercised spoofing and jamming fallback, signed cyber-safety cases for two vessel classes, closed critical findings and a successor-led operating approval. Each degraded mode must demonstrate safe transition with realistic traffic, weather and communications loss, while retained evidence supports class review. Autonomous availability or uneventful mileage alone cannot define completion.

The leader may stop trials, isolate navigation feeds, mandate code or configuration review and commission testing within €4 million. This includes rejecting supplier assurance and requiring independent replay when test conditions are unrepresentative. Commercial deployment, vessel-class changes, permanent hiring and acceptance of residual safety risk remain board decisions; masters retain navigational command.

Fleet commercial optimisation, propulsion redesign and general port cybersecurity are outside scope. Shore-side identity enters only where it can alter navigation software, charts or configuration. The remit joins adversarial navigation evidence to safe autonomous operation rather than absorbing every vessel technology weakness.

Why this seat is open

The trial exposed a hazard that crossed software security and maritime command. Prior leadership failed to escalate that combined risk. A temporary executive is needed to restore evidence, decision rights and regulator confidence before permanent appointment.

What you will own

• Reconstruct sensor, software, operator and network events surrounding the manipulated-position trial, including confidence changes and unrecorded assumptions.
• Define trustworthy navigation inputs, disagreement thresholds, degraded modes and human takeover gates.
• Commission spoofing, jamming, replay and sensor-conflict tests under controlled harbour conditions with independent observers and stop criteria.
• Integrate cyber threats into vessel hazard analysis and safety-case evidence.
• Decide when trials pause, resume or narrow based on residual navigation uncertainty.
• Establish signed software, configuration and chart-update provenance for deployed vessels.
• Transfer threat models, replay data, test results, approval conditions and open hazards through two successor-led assurance reviews.

Candidate qualifications

• Held maritime cyber, autonomous safety or navigation-system assurance authority for vessels operating in congested or regulated waters.
• Can evidence response to GNSS spoofing, jamming or multi-sensor integrity failure.
• Built cyber evidence into a vessel or safety-critical system assurance case.
• Directed adversarial testing without compromising navigational or harbour safety, documenting limits, abort decisions and residual uncertainty.
• Worked with masters, class societies, port authorities, equipment suppliers and software engineers at executive decision level.
• Handed a recovered cyber-physical programme to permanent accountable leadership.