WindBorne Systems
WindBorne Systems
Posted 3 months ago
Internship
Palo Alto, California
In Person
Smart Summary
Responsibilities
You will own the meteorological sensor manufacturing pipeline, including designing tooling and improving calibration infrastructure. Additionally, you will analyze flight data to investigate sensor performance and troubleshoot any biases or failures.
Qualifications
WindBorne Systems is seeking a Sensors Intern with a Bachelor's degree or higher in a STEM field such as Physics or Engineering. The ideal candidate will have hands-on prototyping skills, Python proficiency for data analysis, and a strong physics intuition. This role involves optimizing sensor manufacturing, improving calibration infrastructure, and analyzing sensor flight performance data.
Job Description
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 balloons, 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.
WindBorne's balloons carry custom meteorological sensors that measure temperature, humidity, pressure, wind, and altitude across some of the harshest environments on Earth. Every sensor we fly is built, calibrated, and validated in-house. This role sits at the center of that pipeline: you'll own sensor manufacturing processes, constantly improve our calibration infrastructure, and dig into flight data to understand how our sensors perform in the atmosphere. When something drifts, biases, or breaks, you'll be the one figuring out why and fixing it. You'll design and fabricate tooling and bring calibration systems to production readiness — and the sensors you build and calibrate fly on every balloon in the constellation. We've quadrupled the size of our balloon constellation in the last year, and you'll be essential as we continue to scale at the same pace.
Responsibilities:
Relentlessly optimize meteorological sensor manufacturing processes
Design and fabricate tooling and fixtures for soldering, conformal coating, and assembly workflows
Bring calibration systems to production readiness and improve existing calibration infrastructure, which includes temperature, pressure, and humidity chambers
Develop new measurement tools and methods for sensor characterization
Investigate sources of bias, systematic error, and contamination, and eliminate them
Help with sensor R&D and test new sensing concepts in flight
Analyze sensor flight performance data: sift through data, categorize trends, make clear plots, and present findings
Skills and Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree or higher in Physics, Meteorology, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related STEM field
Hands-on prototyping skills: soldering, CAD, machine shop, 3D printing, laser cutting
Can rapidly prototype, iterate, and push things to production
Strong physics intuition and first-principles thinking
Python proficiency for data analysis and scripting
Linux/bash comfort — ability to navigate systems, run scripts, and work in the terminal
Data and statistical analysis skills
Ability to work with LLMs to accomplish software tasks
High agency: can own projects end-to-end with minimal oversight
Nice to have:
Experience with temperature, pressure, or humidity chambers
Familiarity with low-temperature systems
PCB design or modification experience
Sensor calibration methods in any capacity
Background in experimental physics or instrumentation
Salary
$33/hr
1600 Bridge Pwky, Redwood City, CA. In person required.
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