Lead Instrumentation Engineer

What You'll Do

You will own instrument delivery from scientific requirement through architecture, detailed design, fabrication, integration, calibration, flight testing, validation, and production transition. You will establish the instrument's system requirements, interfaces, performance budget, verification plan, schedule, and technical risks. You will 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. You will coordinate electrical, embedded, data-acquisition, reconstruction-software, UAS-integration, atmospheric-science, manufacturing, and field-validation work. You will identify missing capabilities and determine whether they should be supplied by dedicated hires, existing Rainmaker engineers, contractors, advisors, vendors, or research partners. You will design calibration and validation campaigns, including comparison against commercial cloud-particle and icing instruments. You will lead flight integration and resolve issues discovered in laboratory, ground, and in-cloud testing. You will define production acceptance tests, calibration procedures, maintenance requirements, field documentation, and configuration control. You will 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

You will bring a degree in electrical engineering, optical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, or a related field, or equivalent evidence of exceptional instrument-development ability. You will have a record of delivering complex sensing or scientific hardware from ambiguous requirements to validated operation. You will demonstrate 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. You will excel at setting requirements, interfaces, error or performance budgets, verification methods, and test plans for multidisciplinary hardware. You will possess strong mechanical and electrical intuition and willingness to build, assemble, debug, and test hardware personally. You will have experience making hardware work outside the laboratory under real thermal, vibration, contamination, alignment, power, and communications constraints. You will distinguish a scientifically interesting prototype from a calibrated and supportable operational instrument. You will communicate effectively across scientists, engineers, operators, manufacturers, and external partners. You will exhibit high agency and comfort establishing direction without a mature instrumentation organization or predetermined roadmap.

Preferred Qualifications

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

What Success Looks Like

You will establish 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 90 days. 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

You will receive significant stock options with high potential upside as an early-stage company. You will participate in a 401(k) with employer matching. You will have full health coverage (medical, dental, and vision insurance). You will be provided relocation assistance (if applicable). You will enjoy unlimited PTO. You will receive paid parental leave for both parents. You will have lunch provided when working in-office and a fully stocked kitchenette. You will have free EV charging at the HQ.