Optomechanical Engineer, Atmospheric Instrumentation

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.

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.

What You'll Do

• Design and build the illumination, imaging, sampling-volume, and precision-mechanical architecture of an airborne cloud-particle imaging instrument.
• Select and integrate lasers or other illumination sources, cameras and sensors, optics, mounts, windows, filters, thermal components, and supporting electronics in partnership with the broader team.
• Perform optical layout, tolerance analysis, alignment planning, stray-light analysis, resolution and sampling calculations, and performance verification.
• Design rugged mechanical structures and enclosures that preserve alignment under UAS vibration, shock, temperature variation, moisture, icing, contamination, aerodynamic loading, and handling.
• Balance optical performance against size, weight, power, data rate, thermal management, manufacturability, cost, serviceability, and UAS integration constraints.
• Build, align, calibrate, and troubleshoot benchtop and flight prototypes personally.
• Develop calibration fixtures, controlled targets, alignment procedures, and acceptance tests that can be repeated across production units.
• Work with atmospheric scientists and reconstruction-software owners to connect physical instrument behavior to measurement quality and retrieval performance.
• Produce clear CAD, drawings, tolerance specifications, bills of materials, assembly procedures, and vendor packages.
• Support ground tests, flight tests, reference-instrument comparisons, failure analysis, and rapid design iteration.
• Transition the prototype into a design that Rainmaker can manufacture, calibrate, maintain, and deploy repeatedly.
• Contribute to later optical sensing systems, potentially including lidar, particle imaging, spectroscopy, and other atmospheric instruments.

What We're Looking For

• A degree in optical engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, aerospace engineering, or a related field, or equivalent evidence of exceptional optomechanical ability.
• Hands-on experience designing, assembling, aligning, and troubleshooting optical systems.
• Strong precision-mechanical design skills, including CAD, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, material selection, tolerance stacks, and design for assembly.
• Experience translating optical performance requirements into buildable mechanical hardware.
• Ability to reason about imaging resolution, field of view, depth, illumination, sensor selection, alignment sensitivity, and measurement uncertainty.
• Experience designing hardware for thermal stability, vibration resistance, contamination control, and repeatable alignment.
• Comfort working in a laboratory and shop, using measurement equipment, fixtures, hand tools, and rapid-prototyping methods personally.
• Ability to move quickly from analysis to physical test and use data to drive iteration.
• Clear communication and close collaboration across systems, electrical, embedded, software, scientific, manufacturing, and flight teams.

We care deeply about demonstrated technical ownership. If you have a project, system, experiment, paper, portfolio, or technical write-up that shows how you approach difficult problems, include it with your application and tell us what you personally contributed.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with digital in-line holography, particle imaging, high-speed cameras, lasers, microscopy, lidar, aerosol or cloud instrumentation, or other quantitative optical measurements.
• Experience with optical-design and tolerance-analysis software such as OpticStudio, CODE V, or equivalent tools.
• Experience developing airborne, UAS-borne, space, defense, robotics, or field-deployed optical hardware.
• Familiarity with cloud droplets, ice particles, aerosol measurement, or atmospheric sampling.
• Experience with image-sensor characterization, high-rate data acquisition, triggering, timing, synchronization, or embedded control.
• Experience designing calibration equipment and production alignment or acceptance-test fixtures.
• Experience moving a scientific prototype into low-volume production.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first months, you will have built and characterized the critical optical path, identified the dominant alignment and environmental risks, and demonstrated that the selected architecture can achieve the required particle measurements within the UAS constraints.

Within your first nine months, your optomechanical system will have flown successfully and supported validated in-cloud measurements against reference instrumentation.

For the following cloud-seeding season, you will have converted the prototype into documented, repeatable hardware with stable alignment, calibration procedures, production drawings, acceptance tests, and field-service methods.

Benefits

• Significant stock options with high potential upside as an early-stage company
• 401(k) with employer matching
• Full health coverage (medical, dental, and vision insurance)
• Relocation assistance provided (if applicable)
• Unlimited PTO
• Paid parental leave for both parents
• Lunch provided when working in-office and a fully stocked kitchenette
• Free EV charging at the HQ