Lead Airborne Instrumentation Engineer-Cloud-Particle Imaging

Blackwing; El Segundo, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

401k match

Health coverage

Relocation assistance

Unlimited PTO

Parental leave

Lunch provided

EV charging

Job summary

Rainmaker is seeking a Lead Instrumentation Engineer to own the development of atmospheric sensing hardware for airborne cloud-particle imaging. You will deliver a flight-ready instrument capable of in-cloud measurements and guide its production transition for the next seeding season.

You will personally design, test, and integrate the system, coordinating with teams across optics, electronics, software, and field validation to ensure robust performance in real-world conditions.

Qualifications

• A degree in electrical engineering, optical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, or a related field, or equivalent evidence of exceptional instrument-development ability.

Responsibilities

• Own instrument delivery from scientific requirement through architecture, detailed design, fabrication, integration, calibration, flight testing, validation, and production transition.
• Establish the instrument's system requirements, interfaces, performance budget, verification plan, schedule, and technical risks.
• Make and document critical tradeoffs across optical performance, sampling volume, spatial resolution, size, weight, power, thermal behavior, vibration, environmental exposure, compute, data rate, and manufacturability.
• Coordinate electrical, embedded, data-acquisition, reconstruction-software, UAS-integration, atmospheric-science, manufacturing, and field-validation work.
• Identify missing capabilities and determine whether they should be supplied by dedicated hires, existing Rainmaker engineers, contractors, advisors, vendors, or research partners.
• Design calibration and validation campaigns, including comparison against commercial cloud-particle and icing instruments.
• Lead flight integration and resolve issues discovered in laboratory, ground, and in-cloud testing.
• Define production acceptance tests, calibration procedures, maintenance requirements, field documentation, and configuration control.
• Develop Rainmaker's longer-term atmospheric-instrumentation roadmap based on which measurements would most improve forecasting, targeting, intervention analysis, and scientific understanding.

Skills

Instrument development ability

Sensing hardware delivery

Hands-on engineering

Requirements & test plans

Mechanical intuition

Field hardware experience

Technical communication

Leadership without mature team

Education

Bachelor's degree in EE / Optical / Aerospace / Physics

Equivalent evidence of instrument-development ability

Tools

Digital holography

High-speed imaging

Signal processing

Reconstruction pipelines

Python

Job description

Rainmaker is seeking a Lead Instrumentation Engineer to own the development of atmospheric sensing hardware for airborne cloud-particle imaging. You will deliver a flight-ready instrument capable of in-cloud measurements and guide its production transition for the next seeding season.

You will personally design, test, and integrate the system, coordinating with teams across optics, electronics, software, and field validation to ensure robust performance in real-world conditions.