OceanGate, which owns the missing Titan submersible, has an ominously-worded job ad looking for new pilots

The inhabitants of Titan, OceanGate’s missing submersible, have mere hours of oxygen left — if they are still alive. So it’s a strange time for OceanGate to have a job ad posted on its website looking for new pilots.

That’s right: No one at OceanGate thought it might be in good taste to remove this job ad, which specifies an “immediate opening” for a submarine pilot who is “willing to work in a small, close-knit team environment.” If you winced reading that sentence, well, we winced writing it.

This past Sunday, Titan went missing while taking passengers to the ocean floor to see the wreck of the Titanic. A frantic search is underway to determine what happened. Theories include an explosive decompression that would have killed the pilot and all four tourists on board, damage to the submersible that would have stranded Titan somewhere on the ocean floor, or most optimistically, some kind of error that would have stranded it somewhere on the surface with no way to call for help.

If Titan is still underwater and the passengers are still alive, they have around 12 hours of oxygen left at the time of this writing and potentially no working lights. This is obviously a terrible predicament for the passengers, and for those trying to rescue them, who are searching an area twice the size of Connecticut that involves depths of up to 2.5 miles.

Plus, the only manned craft that could reach Titan would merely be able to pinpoint its location, as it’s impossible to transfer individuals between crafts at such a low depth.

Given these dire circumstances, OceanGate should probably restructure the PR team that has allowed this job ad to stay posted — especially since it contains verbiage that could be construed as seeking to replace the currently missing pilot.

Throw in that OceanGate’s reputation is already suffering from Titan’s technical details becoming known, including that it’s built from off-the-shelf components and has been piloted via a third-party Xbox controller, and you have a company that might not even be around in a few months to onboard its new employees.