Sensors Engineer at WindBorne Systems

WindBorne Systems is supercharging weather models with a unique proprietary data source: a global constellation of next-generation smart weather balloons targeting the most critical atmospheric data. We design, manufacture, and operate our own flight hardware and sensors, using the data they collect to generate otherwise unattainable weather intelligence.

Our mission is to eliminate weather uncertainty, and in the process help humanity adapt to climate change, be that predicting hurricanes or speeding the adoption of renewables. We are building a future in which the planet is instrumented by thousands of our microballoons, eliminating gaps in our understanding of the planet and giving people and businesses the information they need to make critical decisions. The founding team of Stanford engineers was named Forbes 2019 30 under 30 and is backed by top investors including Khosla Ventures.

At its core, WindBorne’s vision is to sense as much as is physically possible, everywhere in the world. Starting with weather sensors — temperature, humidity, winds, and pressure —presents a delicate balance of meteorological-grade quality, cost optimization, manufacturing scalability, and extreme environmental conditions. When further combined with the unique performance characteristics of our balloon platform, this tradeoff makes for a very exciting yet challenging problem. As the platform matures, a myriad other sensors — with a myriad of other fun problems — will be developed as well.

As Sensors Engineer, you will be responsible for the calibration of thousands of sensor packages and for managing the automated processes to perform quality control and bias correction of real-time flight data from around the globe. As we continue to scale, you’ll work on optimizing processes and look for ways to improve the sensing package and calibration systems, in terms of capabilities, throughput, and quality.

Sensors are the only part of our system that can fail silently. A leaky balloon is hard to miss, a 1K warm bias on temperature readings can poison the data from all flights for months. You will play a critical role in ensuring such errors are not made, and in tracking down and addressing the fallout of any that inevitably are. We're dedicated to helping humanity adapt to climate change as fast as possible, and you can be a part of our mission to make this global societal impact. If you are excited about the challenge – and comfortable with the responsibility – of writing code that will directly impact the value of thousands of flight-years of data, WindBorne is the place for you.

Responsibilities

• Work on automated custom calibration processes as we scale from hundreds to tens of thousands of balloons while maintaining stringent meteorological accuracy standards

• Characterize and investigate errors of the system, which can be introduced anywhere in the process from calibration to flight, and write scripts to monitor quality as we scale up

• Improve and maintain software for processing real-time meteorological data, with automated quality control and rejection of bad data, as well as bias correction

• Think about potential hardware, software, and process improvements to sensing systems and calibration rigs to improve throughput and/or data quality, and collaborate with other engineers to implement these changes

• Collaborate with the meteorology team to evaluate the quality of observations in a wide range of conditions

• Support the development and implementation of new types of sensors on the platform

Skills and Qualifications

Required 

• Bachelor's or higher degree in a STEM field 

• Experience applying statistics, fitting, and optimization

• Experience with processing large datasets

• Experience interfacing with sensor hardware and characterizing new data sources

• Standard Python scientific toolbox (Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, etc.), Python scripting.

• Familiarity with the basic underlying physics in common sensors

• Familiarity with the Linux command line, bash, etc.

• Familiarity with C and C++

• High level of proficiency with Google Suite (docs, slides, sheets, gmail, calendar)

• Experience working within a Digital HQ chat platform, e.g. Slack

• High attention to detail to catch issues and concerns before they compromise the accuracy of our data

Nice to have

• Firmware and electrical prototyping (low level C, PCB design, soldering, etc.)

• Mechanical prototyping (CAD, 3D printing, basic machining, etc.)

• Software development experience in a team setting

• PhD in experimental physics or electrical engineering

Salary:

$100k-$200k

Benefits

• 401(k)

• Health, Dental, and Vision insurance

• Unlimited PTO

• Incentive Stock Option Plan
  

Location

Address: 858 San Antonio Rd, Palo Alto, CA. The position is in-person.