About the role#
The Rainmaker Satellite Remote Sensing Fellowship is a paid, full-time research appointment. You will join the satellite remote-sensing group to work on a scoped project aligned with current research priorities. You will take responsibility for a concrete computational workstream while contributing to retrieval, validation, automation, and operational support. This position is based in El Segundo, California, and offers a three-to-six-month appointment.
What you'll do#
- Acquire, process, collocate, and quality-control microwave, polar-orbiting, and geostationary satellite observations.
- Validate satellite products against radar, numerical weather prediction, soundings, surface observations, and Rainmaker aircraft, UAS, or in-situ measurements.
- Quantify detection skill, bias, uncertainty, spatial representativeness, latency, coverage, and failure modes by meteorological regime.
- Implement physically motivated, statistical, or machine learning retrieval improvements when justified by the project and data.
- Build documented, reproducible workflows that other Rainmaker scientists can run and extend.
- Present findings to satellite scientists, radar scientists, meteorologists, operators, and technical leadership.
- Deliver a final artifact such as a collocation dataset, retrieval benchmark, automated data product, error analysis, fusion prototype, or research paper.
What you'll need#
- Current undergraduate, master's, or PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, recent graduates, and other early-career researchers.
- Strong quantitative and programming ability, preferably in Python.
- Experience with atmospheric remote sensing, satellite meteorology, physics, applied mathematics, electrical engineering, computer science, or a related field.
- Interest in microwave sounders, polar-orbiting observations, geostationary imagery, retrieval methods, or scientific data products.
- Comfort working with large, imperfect, multidimensional observational datasets.
- Ability to implement a scientific method, establish a baseline, and validate results carefully.
- Clear written and verbal communication.
Location & details#
- Location: El Segundo, California.
- Modality: On-site.
- Commitment: Full-time.
- Duration: Three-to-six-month appointment, with four months as the standard.
- Compensation: $8,000 per month.
- Benefits: Full health coverage (medical, dental, and vision insurance), lunch provided when working in-office, a fully stocked kitchenette, and free EV charging at the headquarters.
