For This Engineer, Taking Deep Dives Is Part of the Job

Early in Levi Unema's career as an electrical engineer, he was presented with an unusual opportunity. While working on assembly lines at an automotive parts supplier in 2015, he got a surprise call from his high-school science teacher that set him off on an entirely new path: piloting underwater robots to explore the ocean's deepest abysses.

That call came from Harlan Kredit, a nationally renowned science teacher and board member of a Rhode Island-based nonprofit called the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration (GFOE). The organization was looking for an electrical engineer to help design, build, and pilot remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Levi Unema

Employer

Deep Exploration Solutions

Occupation

ROV engineer

Education

Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, Michigan Technological University

This was an exciting break for Unema, a Washington state native who had grown up tinkering with electronics and exploring the outdoors. Unema joined the team in early 2016 and has since helped develop and operate deep-sea robots for scientific expeditions around the globe.

The GFOE's contract with NOAA expired in July, forcing the engineering team to disband. But soon after, Unema teamed up with four former colleagues to start their own ROV consultancy, called Deep Exploration Solutions, to continue the work he's so passionate about.

I love the exploration and just seeing new things every day," he says. And the engineering challenges that go along with it are really exciting, because there's a lot of pressure down there and a lot of technical problems to solve."

Nature and Technology

Unema's fascination with electronics started early. Growing up in Lynden, Wash., he took apart radios, modified headphones, and hacked together USB chargers from AA batteries. I've always had to know how things work," he says. He was also a Boy Scout, and much of his youth was spent hiking, camping, and snowboarding.

That love of both technology and nature can be traced back, at least in part, to his parents-his father was a civil engineer, and his mother was a high-school biology teacher. But another major influence growing up was Kredit, the science teacher who went on to recruit him. (Kredit was also a colleague of Unema's mother.)

Kredit has won numerous awards for his work as an educator, including the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching in 2004. Like Unema, he also shares a love for the outdoors as Yellowstone National Park's longest-serving park ranger. He was an excellent science teacher, very inspiring," says Unema.

When Unema graduated high school in 2010, he decided to enroll at his father's alma mater, Michigan Technological University, to study engineering. He was initially unsure what discipline to follow and signed up for the general engineering course, but he quickly settled on electrical engineering.

A summer internship at a steel mill run by the multinational corporation ArcelorMittal introduced Unema to factory automation and assembly lines. After graduating in 2014 he took a job at Gentex Corp. in Zeeland, Mich., where he worked on manufacturing systems and industrial robotics.

Diving Into Underwater Robotics

In late 2015, he got the call from Kredit asking if he'd be interested in working on underwater robots for GFOE. The role involved not just engineering these systems, but also piloting them. Taking the plunge was a difficult choice, says Unema, as he'd just been promoted at Gentex. But the promise of travel combined with the novel engineering challenges made it too good an opportunity to turn down.

Building technology that can withstand the crushing pressure at the bottom of the ocean is tough, he says, and you have to make trade-offs between weight, size, and cost. Everything has to be waterproof, and electronics have to be carefully isolated to prevent them from grounding on the ocean floor. Some components are pressure-tolerant, but most must be stored in pressurized titanium flasks, so the components must be extremely small to minimize the size of the metallic housing.

Unema conducts predive checks from the Okeanos Explorer's control room. Once the ROV is launched, scientists will watch the camera feeds and advise his team where to direct the vehicle.Art Howard

You're working very closely with the mechanical engineer to fit the electronics in a really small space," he says. The smaller the cylinder is, the cheaper it is, but also the less mass on the vehicle. Every bit of mass means more buoyancy is required, so you want to keep things small, keep things light."

Communications are another challenge. The ROVs rely on several kilometers of cable containing just three single-mode optical fibers. All the communication needs to come together and then go up one cable," Unema says. And every year new instruments consume more data."

He works exclusively on ROVs that are custom made for scientific research, which require smoother control and considerably more electronics and instrumentation than the heavier-duty vehicles used by the oil and gas industry. The science ones are all hand-built, they're all quirky," he says.

Unema's role spans the full life cycle of an ROV's design, construction, and operation. He primarily spends winters upgrading and maintaining vehicles and summers piloting them on expeditions. At GFOE, he mainly worked on two ROVs for NOAA called Deep Discoverer and Seirios, which operate from the ship Okeanos Explorer. But he has also piloted ROVs for other organizations over the years, including the Schmidt Ocean Institute and the Ocean Exploration Trust.

Unema's new consultancy, Deep Exploration Solutions, has been given a contract to do the winter maintenance on the NOAA ROVs, and the firm is now on the lookout for more ROV design and upgrade work, as well as piloting jobs.

An Engineer's Life at Sea

On expeditions, Unema is responsible for driving the robot. He follows instructions from a science team that watches the ROV's video feed to identify things like corals, sponges, or deepwater creatures that they'd like to investigate in more detail. Sometimes he will also operate hydraulic arms to sample particularly interesting finds.

In general, the missions are aimed at discovering new species and mapping the range of known ones, says Unema. There's a lot of the bottom of the ocean where we don't know anything about it," he says. Basically every expedition there's some new species."

This involves being at sea for weeks at a time. Unema says that life aboard ships can be challenging-many new crew members get seasick, and you spend almost a month living in close quarters with people you've often never met before. But he enjoys the opportunity to meet colleagues from a wide variety of backgrounds who are all deeply enthusiastic about the mission.

It's like when you go to scout camp or summer camp," he says. You're all meeting new people. Everyone's really excited to be there. We don't know what we're going to find."

Unema also relishes the challenge of solving engineering problems with the limited resources available on the ship. We're going out to the middle of the Pacific," he says. Things break, and you've got to fix them with what you have out there."

If that sounds more exciting than daunting, and you're interested in working with ROVs, Unema's main advice is to talk to engineers in the field. It's a small but friendly community, he says, so just do your research to see what opportunities are available. Some groups, such as the Ocean Exploration Trust, also operate internships for college students to help them get experience in the field.

And Unema says there are very few careers quite like it. I love it because I get to do all aspects of engineering-from idea to operations," he says. To be able to take something I worked on and use it in the field is really rewarding."

This article appears in the December 2025 print issue as Levi Unema."