Lead Instrumentation Engineer

Blackwing

El Segundo, Northern (CA, KY)

Hybrid

USD 150,000 - 210,000

Full time

14 days+

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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

About Rainmaker

Rainmaker is pioneering a modern cloud-seeding system to increase precipitation, improve water availability, and address severe-weather challenges. We combine atmospheric science, weather-resistant UAS, radar and satellite observations, numerical weather prediction, novel sensing systems, and sustainable seeding technologies to design, operate, and evaluate precipitation-enhancement programs.

Research and engineering at Rainmaker are attached directly to operations. We build instruments, models, aircraft, and decision systems that are tested in the atmosphere and improved with every deployment.

About the Role

Rainmaker is hiring a Lead Instrumentation Engineer to own the technical development of our atmospheric sensing hardware. You will translate scientific measurement needs into instruments that can survive flight, produce calibrated data, and become reliable parts of Rainmaker's operational system.

Your first mission is concrete: deliver a new airborne cloud-particle imaging instrument for integration on a Rainmaker UAS. Within your first nine months, the instrument must successfully fly and produce in-cloud measurements of particle size distribution, phase, and concentration that can be validated against reference instrumentation. You will then lead its transition into a production-ready system for the following cloud-seeding season.

This is a technical leadership role, not primarily a people-management role. You will personally make engineering decisions, build and test hardware, and solve integration problems while assembling the internal, external, and vendor support required to deliver the system.

What You'll Do

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.

What We're Looking For

A degree in electrical engineering, optical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, or a related field, or equivalent evidence of exceptional instrument-development ability.
A record of delivering complex sensing or scientific hardware from ambiguous requirements to validated operation.
Deep hands-on strength in at least one relevant discipline, paired with enough systems judgment to integrate optics, mechanics, electronics, embedded control, software, and data products.
Experience setting requirements, interfaces, error or performance budgets, verification methods, and test plans for multidisciplinary hardware.
Strong mechanical and electrical intuition and willingness to build, assemble, debug, and test hardware personally.
Experience making hardware work outside the laboratory under real thermal, vibration, contamination, alignment, power, and communications constraints.
Ability to distinguish a scientifically interesting prototype from a calibrated and supportable operational instrument.
Strong written and verbal communication across scientists, engineers, operators, manufacturers, and external partners.
High agency and comfort establishing direction without a mature instrumentation organization or predetermined roadmap.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience developing airborne, UAS-borne, atmospheric, remote-sensing, particle-imaging, optical, lidar, radar, or other scientific instruments.
Experience with digital holography, high-speed imaging, lasers, cloud-particle probes, aerosol instruments, or optical particle characterization.
Familiarity with atmospheric measurements, cloud microphysics, calibration, measurement uncertainty, or field campaigns.
Experience designing within aerospace size, weight, power, vibration, thermal, and environmental constraints.
Experience transitioning low-volume scientific hardware into repeatable production and field support.
Familiarity with scientific Python, data acquisition, embedded systems, signal processing, or reconstruction pipelines.
Experience selecting and managing specialized vendors or contract manufacturers.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first 90 days, you will have established a credible system architecture, validation plan, program schedule, and resourcing plan for the instrument while retiring the highest-risk technical unknowns through hands-on testing.

Within your first nine months, Rainmaker will have successfully flown the prototype on a Rainmaker UAS and validated its in-cloud measurements against reference instrumentation.

For the following cloud-seeding season, Rainmaker will have a production-ready instrument with documented calibration, acceptance testing, integration, maintenance, data-processing, and field-support procedures.

Beyond the first instrument, you will have established a disciplined instrument-development capability and a prioritized roadmap for the atmospheric measurements Rainmaker should own.

Benefits