OSINT Analyst – Vessel Identification

About the role

The OSINT Analyst joins Kpler’s Maritime Domain Awareness team in Dubai, acting as the human adjudication layer for automated vessel detections. You will resolve ambiguous contacts, attach verified identities, and provide the evidence and confidence needed for downstream users.

Key responsibilities

• Adjudicate automated detections that lack confident identification, assigning name, IMO, owner, operator and flag with documented provenance.
• Investigate dark vessels, AIS gaps, GNSS spoofing, duplicated MMSI, and other identity‑manipulation tactics.
• Interpret satellite, optical and SAR imagery, cross‑reference ship‑photo databases, registries, ownership records and port‑state data.
• Reconstruct vessel pattern‑of‑life and ownership history to turn single detections into explained vessels.
• Produce structured identification records with clear source citations and confidence statements.
• Feed ground‑truth cases back to data‑science teams to improve detection models.

Required profile

• 3+ years of experience in intelligence, investigations, maritime analysis or a related OSINT discipline.
• Strong working knowledge of the maritime domain, including AIS, vessel registries, flag and ownership structures.
• Proven ability to turn fragmentary evidence into defensible, evidence‑led conclusions.
• Excellent written communication, capable of producing clear assessments for analysts, compliance teams and senior stakeholders.

Required skills

• Satellite imagery analysis (including optical and SAR).
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial tooling.
• Open‑source intelligence (OSINT) tradecraft: source discovery, cross‑referencing and provenance handling.
• Handling and analysis of large maritime datasets.