Machine Learning Researcher — Weather & Operations

Lever, Inc.; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

401(k) with employer matching

Health coverage

Relocation assistance

Unlimited PTO

Parental leave

Lunch provided in-office

EV charging

Job summary

Rainmaker is hiring its first dedicated Machine Learning Researcher to shape how ML is used across the company. You will build models, collaborate with meteorologists, and turn research into operational systems for forecasting, nowcasting, and state estimation.

You will work with diverse data sources—radar, satellite, UAS, and in-situ observations—while ensuring robust evaluation and clear communication of results to leadership.

Qualifications

• Exceptional ability in ML research and engineering.
• Strong command of modern ML methods and evaluation.
• Ability to work with noisy, sparse, multimodal data.
• Experience turning research into production.

Responsibilities

• Assess potential ML projects across Rainmaker and prioritize them by operational value, data readiness, technical tractability, and time to useful results.
• Deliver an operationally useful model or prototype within your first three months.
• Build models for forecasting, nowcasting, retrievals, multimodal atmospheric-state estimation, simulation, intervention analysis, and other scientific or operational applications.
• Develop methods for forecasting occurrence, location, amount, and persistence of supercooled liquid water at scales relevant to cloud-seeding operations.
• Combine public NWP, radar, satellite, microwave-sounder, aircraft, UAS, sounding, surface, and in-situ observations.
• Establish honest experimental comparisons and characterize calibration, uncertainty, generalization, and failure modes.
• Work closely with meteorologists and atmospheric scientists to define targets, priors, and ground truth.
• Write research-quality software and prototypes that engineers can productionize.
• Use Rainmaker's compute budget deliberately, scaling experiments when justified.
• Help Rainmaker learn from every operation, field campaign, new sensor, and intervention.
• Communicate results and limitations clearly to scientists, engineers, operators, and leadership.

Skills

Machine learning research

Python

PyTorch/JAX

Multimodal data

Experiment design

Communication with scientists

Job description

Rainmaker is hiring its first dedicated Machine Learning Researcher to shape how ML is used across the company. You will build models, collaborate with meteorologists, and turn research into operational systems for forecasting, nowcasting, and state estimation.

You will work with diverse data sources—radar, satellite, UAS, and in-situ observations—while ensuring robust evaluation and clear communication of results to leadership.