Rainmaker Fellow, Atmospheric Instrumentation

This is a paid, full-time research and engineering fellowship at Rainmaker, where you will join the instrumentation team to work on a scoped project in atmospheric instrumentation. You will take responsibility for a concrete experimental or engineering workstream, contributing to the design, testing, and review work of the broader team. The goal is to produce a rigorous, reusable result that advances an important part of the instrument development program.

Responsibilities

• Translate a scientific measurement need into a scoped experimental or engineering plan with your mentor.
• Build, integrate, calibrate, or test hardware and analysis methods required by the assigned project.
• Create repeatable calibration procedures for the agreed instrument metrics.
• Characterize measurement uncertainty and sensitivity to environmental, mechanical, optical, electrical, or algorithmic factors.
• Build fixtures, test equipment, data-acquisition workflows, and analysis software needed for validation.
• Help design laboratory, ground, and flight comparisons against reference instrumentation.
• Connect physical instrument behavior to measurement and retrieval quality.
• Produce clear documentation, calibration records, acceptance criteria, and reusable analysis code.
• Deliver a final artifact such as a validated dataset, calibration system, instrument prototype, test method, uncertainty analysis, or technical report.

Requirements

• Current undergraduate, master's, or PhD students; postdoctoral researchers; recent graduates; and other early-career researchers are all eligible.
• Background in optical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, physics, atmospheric science, experimental science, or a related field.
• Strong hands-on experimental ability and willingness to build and troubleshoot hardware personally.
• Quantitative programming and data-analysis ability.
• Careful scientific judgment about calibration, uncertainty, repeatability, and validation.
• Ability to take responsibility for a bounded workstream while collaborating closely with instrumentation engineers and scientists.
• Availability for full-time, on-site work in El Segundo for the agreed appointment.

Nice to have

• Digital holography, microscopy, particle imaging, lasers, high-speed cameras, lidar, aerosol instruments, cloud probes, or optical metrology.
• Calibration fixtures, laboratory automation, uncertainty budgets, environmental testing, or acceptance testing.
• Scientific Python, image processing, signal processing, or data acquisition.
• Airborne, UAS-borne, field-deployed, or low-volume scientific instruments.

Benefits

• Full health coverage (medical, dental, and vision insurance)
• Lunch provided when working in-office and a fully stocked kitchenette
• Free EV charging at the HQ