Head of Launch - Africa
About the job
- At least 8 years of experience in senior operations, market launch, business development, or public policy roles, ideally within maritime, logistics, or other highly regulated sectors.
- Deep understanding of the political, regulatory, and business diversity across Africa’s coastal regions and maritime economies.
- A proven track record navigating government relationships, regional maritime bodies, and public-private partnerships across multiple jurisdictions.
- Demonstrated success closing complex business-to-business partnerships, joint ventures, or fleet agreements in emerging or frontier markets.
- The ability to draft a market entry plan and negotiate a stakeholder partnership in the same day.
- Fluency in English is required.
- Build and maintain relationships with national maritime authorities, port authorities, and regional bodies across Africa’s regulatory landscape.
- Anticipate regulatory shifts, trade restrictions, and policy changes across port state control regimes, including the Abuja Memorandum of Understanding and Indian Ocean Memorandum of Understanding, and continent-wide frameworks such as the African Union’s 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy; develop strategies to neutralize risks before they affect operations.
- Partner with Legal and Compliance to ensure each market launch meets local labor, customs, trade, spectrum and equipment type-approval, data-handling, and maritime safety requirements.
- Develop scalable, repeatable launch strategies adapted to the political, economic, and infrastructure realities of individual African markets.
- Establish the import, customs, and logistics framework for bringing SmartMast hardware into target markets, including initial warehousing and staging before deployment.
- Identify, vet, and onboard local installers, fabricators, and port-side vendors capable of supporting SmartMast deployment to Quartermaster’s quality and safety standards.
- Identify, engage, and convert commercial fleet operators, independent vessel owners, port authorities, and maritime organizations suitable for SmartMast deployment.
- Negotiate and close partnership and space-use agreements securing vessel capacity and long-term maritime relationships.
- Oversee the transition from signed agreement to operational integration, ensuring fleet, port, and vendor partners meet Quartermaster’s quality, safety, and performance standards and that Field Operations can deploy without delay.
- Build durable relationships with fleets, ports, and maritime organizations to build brand trust and reduce bureaucratic friction before deployment.
- Recruit, scale, and mentor a local cross-disciplinary team spanning field operations, market support, and stakeholder relations.
- Align global product, engineering, legal, and marketing teams with African market requirements.
- Serve as the primary feedback loop to Quartermaster leadership on regional dynamics, technical requirements, and localized risks.
- Professional proficiency in French, Arabic, Portuguese, or Swahili is highly preferred.
- Experience within maritime, logistics, or other highly regulated sectors is preferred.
- Experience closing complex business-to-business partnerships, joint ventures, or fleet agreements in emerging or frontier markets is desirable.
About the company
Quartermaster AI Inc. builds a distributed maritime sensor network that uses vessel-mounted sensor arrays with HD video, geolocation, and edge compute transponders to create a real-time picture of global ocean activity. Its AI models analyze video and sensor data to detect suspicious at-sea activities and threats, delivering visuals and insights through a hardened satellite link. The system turns civilian and commercial ships into persistent sensing nodes that collectively provide continuous maritime domain awareness for coast guards, navies, insurers, and researchers. The goal is to improve safety, security, and environmental oversight by providing timely, verifiable intelligence that supports rapid, coordinated responses.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$183M
Headquarters
Arlington, Virginia
Founded
2016
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Insight Partners led Quartermaster's $140 million Series B on September 28, 2026.
- Quartermaster doubled manufacturing capacity after shipping over 800 SmartMast units.
- The new Stifel facility funds vessel expansion across active fishing grounds and shipping lanes.
What critics are saying
- Hardware deployment depends on shipowner cooperation; scaling stalls if fleets reject mast installations.
- Spire and Windward already sell maritime intelligence; customers can consolidate around one platform.
- A defense-only budget shift would crush growth if civilian insurers or shippers slow buying.
What makes Quartermaster unique
- SmartMast turns 650+ vessels across 25 countries into a live ocean sensor mesh.
- Quartermaster sells verified onboard data, not spoofable AIS pings or remote imagery.
- The Navy selected SmartMast for Sea Hunter integration on August 10, 2026.
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Benefits
Flexible Work Hours
Remote Work Options
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 36%1 year growth
↑ 36%2 year growth
↑ 46%Quartermaster secures Series B to expand SmartMast ocean data network. * 29 September 2026 * Edited By: Haley McQueen Quartermaster has raised $140 million to build out its distributed data network for the ocean, combining a $100 million Series B led by Insight Partners with a $40 million venture debt facility from Stifel. The Arlington, Virginia-based company announced the financing on September 28, 2026. (Image credit: Quartermaster) Overmatch Ventures joins the Series B as a new investor. First Round Capital and Quiet Capital, which co-led Quartermaster's $43 million Series A in May 2026, returned for the round, alongside Steel Atlas, TMV, BoxGroup, and Operator Partners. According to the company, it had not planned to raise again this year, but accepted a preemptive offer from Insight as the gap widened between what fleets need and what existing offerings provide. The new capital will fund engineering hires and the recruitment of additional vessels to extend coverage across the world's most active fishing grounds and commercial shipping lanes. The raise follows a turbulent year for commercial shipping in the Gulf. In late February, military jamming and spoofing of navigation signals - used to defend against drones and missiles - left commercial vessels in Emirati, Qatari, Omani, and Iranian waters receiving false positions. Quartermaster frames the Strait of Hormuz closure that followed, now approaching seven months, as an economic problem as much as a military one. Economists at the Dallas Fed attributed the initial closure mainly to the need to adjust insurance contracts for oil tankers; several major underwriters stopped writing the region in March, and war risk premiums for a Hormuz transit in July reached 7-10 percent of a ship's insured value per voyage, more than 30 times February levels. Neil Sobin, CEO of Quartermaster, wrote that one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints closed not because of drones or mines "but because of an actuarial table." The risk, he argued, could not be priced because no one had a clear, objective picture of conditions in and around the Strait. Quartermaster's answer is physical presence on the water. The company contrasts its approach with automatic identification system (AIS) broadcasts, satellite navigation, radio frequency geolocation, and orbital imaging, which it characterizes as secondhand or remote signals. Its SmartMast sensor units are installed on working vessels - more than 650 across 25 countries, mostly small operators - at no cost to the operator beyond mast space. Operators receive the hardware, installation, and support, along with access to their own feeds, hazard alerts along their route, and broadband internet at sea. In return, SmartMast data feeds the network, which Quartermaster offers to insurers, fleets, and energy operators. The company positions that network as the missing ocean layer in the datasets behind AI for trade, energy, and logistics - data it argues cannot be gathered from orbit or modeled from afar. With the Series B and debt facility in place, the next phase centers on engineering growth and bringing more vessels into the network. Don't miss the headlines. ON&T's top news, every week. More in Milestones
Maritime intelligence startup Quartermaster raises another $140M. The tech enables real-time awareness for what Quartermaster calls the "largest blind spot on Earth." Arlington, Virginia-based startup Quartermaster in May closed a $43 million Series A around its idea of using weather-hardened sensors to capture data and generate insights about maritime activity. That idea has proven popular, because Quartermaster has already closed a much larger Series B, bringing in $140 million this time. Founder and CEO Neil Sobin said the round was preempted by software-focused venture firm Insight Partners, and the interest in what Quartermaster is building was helped by the war in Iran and the shipping chaos it's caused. "I think we we've gained huge amounts of conviction in the core thesis," Sobin said in an exclusive interview. "A big part of the story for us this year was, events in the world drive that clarity and drive that conviction and urgency, and when you see that, you gotta seize the opportunity." About $100 million of the Series B came from Insight and new investor, defense-focused firm Overmatch Ventures, as well as existing backers like First Round Capital. The remaining $40 million came in the form of a debt facility from investment bank Stifel. "Quartermaster is building a distributed network for the ocean, where reliable, real-time data has been difficult to come by," Nick Sinai, managing director at Insight Partners, said in a statement to TechCrunch. "The team's execution and the strong demand for maritime data and awareness made this an investment we wanted to lead, and we're proud to back Neil and the team as they scale to meet the opportunity with commercial fleets." Quartermaster's hardware, which it calls "SmartMast," is a fairly straightforward setup. The startup integrates cameras and radios into a package that's mounted on a ship's mast, and can capture and relay real-time maritime data. This allows governments, shipping companies and insurance providers to know far more than the current standard of AIS, or the "automatic identification system," which is more or less just a series of location pings. This real-time awareness data creates all kinds of opportunities for what Quartermaster calls the "largest blind spot on Earth." Everything from helping ships avoid collisions, to better understanding congestion in shipping lanes, to rescuing lost mariners is on the table. Sobin said each SmartMast records tens of gigabytes per day, and the startup and its customers are still finding new uses for the data being captured. "There isn't a lot of prior art in maritime AI, and so it's been exciting to, one, have our own source of data," he said. "But two, there's just so much low hanging fruit that we've been knocking down this summer in what you can start to build and then deliver value for our customers on." Sobin said the startup spends a lot of time engaging with people across the maritime industry - and not just vessel owners and operators - in order to find out what they want out of this technology. "This is an ignored field. Mariners around the world have been ignored by technology for a really long time, and so when they meet us, they're so excited, because they're like: 'Oh, I have so many ideas, let's work on them'," he said. More than 650 vessels are now equipped with SmartMast in 25 countries, Sobin said, and the startup has shipped over 800 to customers. That gap is largely driven by the fact that Quartermaster is about to start deploying the SmartMast system to entire fleets, a sign that early adopters are really buying into the idea. Quartermaster has had to hustle to keep up with demand, Sobin said. The startup has doubled its manufacturing capacity and continues to tweak its design so its hardware can be manufactured at a quicker clip. "We know we can do this, and we are seeing a lot of proof that tells us we're really onto something massive and important in the world," Sobin said. "So, what do you do when you have that position? You run faster and you move faster and you double down on that strategy."
Arlington, Virginia-based Quartermaster has raised $140 million in Series B funding, just months after closing a $43 million Series A in May. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from new investor Overmatch Ventures and existing backers including First Round Capital. An additional $40 million came via a debt facility from Stifel. The startup deploys weather-hardened sensors called SmartMast on ships' masts to capture real-time maritime data using cameras and radios. This provides governments, shipping companies and insurers with far more information than standard location tracking systems. Each SmartMast records tens of gigabytes daily. Over 650 vessels across 25 countries now use the technology, with 800 units shipped to customers. Founder Neil Sobin said recent shipping chaos has driven demand for maritime surveillance capabilities.
Quartermaster AI has raised $48.6 million in a funding round, according to a Form D filing. The company is offering the same amount to investors through a private placement of securities. Whilst the specific use of proceeds has not been detailed in the filing, such funding typically supports research and development, market expansion or operational scaling. The Form D filing is a standard requirement for private companies raising capital under Regulation D of the Securities Act. The development positions Quartermaster AI to potentially accelerate its business objectives, though the long-term impact will depend on how effectively the funds are deployed.
Quartermaster raises $43M to transform ocean tracking. 22 May 2026 Key Takeaways * Quartermaster raised $43 million in a Series A funding round. * The company's SmartMast system uses AI-powered maritime sensors on ships. * Quartermaster's data network is already running on more than 600 ships across 25 countries, actively tracking over 10 million square miles of ocean. Quartermaster has raised $43 million in a Series A funding round as it looks to build what it describes as the world's largest decentralised maritime awareness network. The investment signals a major push by venture capital into the largely untapped domain of ocean intelligence and maritime computer vision. The funding round was co-led by First Round Capital and Quiet Capital, with strong participation from a specialised syndicate of maritime, defence, and logistics-focused investors. Joining the round were TMV Logistics, Steel Atlas, BoxGroup, Operator Partners, Shorewind Capital, and prominent real estate executive David Adelman. Based in Boston, Quartermaster plans to use this infusion of capital to grow its engineering footprint, develop its analytics platform, and increase its global physical sensor presence in commercial shipping lanes. Fixing the blind spots of global trade. Although oceans are the principal mode of transportation of approximately 80% by weight of all world trade, the shipping industry is still dependent on isolated, tardy and readily falsifiable tracking information. For decades, the global standard for tracking vessels has been the Automatic Identification System (AIS). While functional, AIS is fundamentally an opt-in radio broadcasting protocol. It is notoriously easy for bad actors to spoof (fake their location) or turn off entirely to hide illicit activities, such as illegal fishing, sanctions evasion, or cargo theft. Quartermaster argues that this lack of verifiable, real-time ground truth has held back modern logistics and security. "The ocean has not had its AI moment because it has not had its data moment," the company stated during its funding announcement. To bridge this data gap, Quartermaster developed SmartMast, a weather-hardened, edge-computing hardware and software package designed to be permanently mounted directly onto a ship's mast. Rather than relying purely on GPS signals, SmartMast transforms ordinary commercial vessels into intelligent, decentralised data collection nodes. Each unit features an array of optical cameras, environmental sensors, and advanced radio receivers. Powered by onboard edge computing, SmartMast intercepts localised radio anomalies, maps real-time weather changes, and captures continuous video feeds of surrounding vessel activity. Instead of processing this information manually, the system structures this massive wave of decentralised telemetry on the edge, beaming a live, immutable situational awareness layer back to global insurers, logistics providers, and maritime law enforcement agencies. Leveraging network effects over hardware sales. Led by CEO Neil Sobin, Quartermaster's business model deliberately avoids the traditional trap of selling hardware piecemeal to single fleets. Instead, the startup builds an interconnected hive mind for the ocean. By treating individual ship owners as critical infrastructure partners rather than simple hardware buyers, Quartermaster rapidly scales its active coverage area through powerful network effects. The strategy is already yielding significant dividends. To date, Quartermaster has successfully deployed its technology onto more than 600 active commercial vessels spanning 25 countries and four continents. This floating mesh network has successfully mapped over 10 million square miles of ocean, including a record-breaking 2.8 million square miles in April alone. Crucially, the benefits of this network extend beyond standard commercial and defence intelligence. Quartermaster revealed that its active pro-mariner sensing network has already directly assisted in more than 20 real-world rescues at sea, proving that localised, real-time computer vision can drastically decrease emergency response times in isolated waters. Accelerating the next wave of marine tech. With $43 million added to its balance sheet, Quartermaster's primary obstacle is no longer capital but engineering talent. A significant portion of the Series A round will be used to double its workforce, anchored by a newly inked, nearly 13,000-square-foot lease in Arlington Tower near the Rosslyn Metro station. The startup is aggressively recruiting specialists in computer vision, spatial data engineering, and ruggedised IoT systems to train autonomous marine software models. "Quartermaster is completely reshaping how maritime operators understand and act on the world's oceans," said Bill Trenchard, partner at First Round Capital. By replacing compliance guesswork with un-spoofable edge data, the Arlington startup aims to bring absolute transparency to the high seas. I'm a crypto writer with 4+ years of experience passionate about turning big, technical ideas into content anyone can understand. From blockchain to stablecoins to everything in between, I enjoy helping readers stay informed in a space that never stops moving. Disclaimer VentureBurn is a media platform covering the latest in cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, venture capital, and the startup ecosystem. Opinions expressed on VentureBurn are for informational purposes only and do not constitute investment advice. 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