Optomechanical Engineer, Atmospheric… at Rainmaker · El Segundo

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 an Optomechanical Engineer to build the physical core of our airborne atmospheric-imaging systems. Your first project will be a compact UAS-borne cloud-particle imaging instrument that measures particle size distribution, phase, and concentration inside clouds.

You will own the instrument's optical and precision-mechanical implementation while working closely with Rainmaker's instrumentation lead, atmospheric scientists, electrical and embedded engineers, software engineers, UAS team, and manufacturing partners. Within your first nine months, the system must successfully fly and produce in-cloud measurements validated against reference instrumentation, followed by production deployment during the next cloud-seeding season.

This is a hands-on builder role. You will design optical paths and mechanical structures, align and characterize prototypes, diagnose real hardware, and iterate until the instrument works in flight—not simply produce drawings or simulations for someone else to execute.