Machine Learning Research Engineer, Model Evaluation

WindBorne Systems; Redwood City (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k)

Dental, health, and vision insurance

Unlimited PTO

Stock Option Plan

Office food and beverages

Job summary

WindBorne Systems is building a data‑driven weather intelligence platform by designing, manufacturing, and operating advanced weather balloons. We seek an evaluation scientist to lead rigorous comparisons between WeatherMesh and state‑of‑the‑art models, focusing on forecast quality and uncertainty.

You will build fast, reproducible evaluation pipelines, develop agentic tools, and communicate results through scorecards and visuals for researchers, leadership, customers, and partners.

Qualifications

• Strong scientific judgment and skepticism.
• Excellent experimental taste for evaluation questions.
• Systems thinking with focus on reusable infrastructure.
• Experience evaluating ML systems on geospatial or time-series data.
• Strong Python skills with PyTorch, NumPy, and pandas.
• Able to investigate ambiguous results and communicate conclusions clearly.

Responsibilities

• Evaluation strategy development with the Meteorology team to compare WeatherMesh against leading models.
• Build quick evaluations and durable, reproducible evaluation infrastructure.
• Improve evaluation tools, including agentic AI-based tooling for investigating forecasts.
• Communicate model performance with scorecards and visualizations for researchers, leadership, customers, and partners.

Skills

Scientific judgment

Experimental mindset

Systems thinking

ML evaluation

Python

PyTorch

NumPy

Pandas

xarray

Independent investigator

Tools

PyTorch

NumPy

Pandas

xarray

Job description

WindBorne Systems is supercharging weather forecasts with a proprietary data source: a global constellation of next‑generation smart weather balloons targeting critical atmospheric data. We design, manufacture, and operate our own balloons, using their observations to generate otherwise unattainable weather intelligence. Our mission is to eliminate weather uncertainty and help humanity adapt to climate change—whether by predicting hurricanes or speeding the adoption of renewables.

Responsibilities

• Evaluation strategy — Work with our Meteorology team to develop a rigorous, meteorologically valid strategy for comparing WeatherMesh with leading AI and physics‑based models. Choose the metrics, datasets, baselines, and case studies that provide an honest picture of forecast quality.
• Fast feedback and durable systems — Build quick evaluations that give researchers useful signals, then turn recurring analyses into reliable, reusable infrastructure. Think systematically about reproducibility, provenance, and how evaluation tools fit into the broader research workflow.
• Agentic tooling for evals — Improve our existing evaluation infrastructure, including agentic AI‑based tools for investigating forecasts and synthesizing results.
• Technical communication — Produce clear scorecards, visualizations, and explanations for researchers, leadership, customers, and external partners. Communicate model performance precisely, including uncertainty and important caveats.

Skills and Qualifications

• Excellent scientific judgment and healthy skepticism. You ask whether a comparison is fair, what else could explain a result, and what evidence would change your mind.
• Strong experimental taste: you can identify the evaluation that answers the question that matters and distinguish robust improvement from noise.
• Systems thinking: you can solve today’s problem while recognizing what should become reusable infrastructure for future work.
• Experience evaluating ML systems using large, scientific, geospatial, multidimensional, or time‑series datasets.
• Strong Python skills and experience with scientific and ML tools such as PyTorch, NumPy, pandas, or xarray.
• Able to investigate ambiguous results independently, synthesize evidence, and communicate conclusions clearly.
• Experience with weather, climate, forecasting, physical science, or AI‑assisted research tools is helpful, but not required.

Benefits

• 401(k)
• Dental, health, and vision insurance
• Unlimited PTO
• Stock Option Plan
• Office food and beverages

Salary

$140k–$240k. We consider a range of backgrounds and experience levels and adjust offers to be competitive with market rates.

Location

1600 Bridge Pkwy, Redwood City, CA. Hybrid or in-person.