Sensors Intern

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 Systems is looking for a Sensors Intern to improve our sensor manufacturing processes. WindBorne's balloons carry custom meteorological sensors that measure temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind speed 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, improve our calibration infrastructure, and dig into flight data to understand how our sensors perform. 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 will 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, including temperature, pressure, and humidity chambers

• Develop new measurement tools and methods for sensor characterization

• Investigate and eliminate sources of bias, systematic error, and contamination

• Reasearch and develop new sensors and test them in flight

• Analyze flight performance data: sift through large quantities of data, categorize trends, and present findings
  

Skills and Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related STEM field

• Hands-on hardware 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

• Ability to work with LLMs to accomplish software tasks

• 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

• High agency: can own projects end-to-end with minimal oversight

Nice to have:

• Experience with temperature, pressure, or humidity chambers

• Experience with PCB design or modification

• Familiarity with low-temperature systems

• Sensor calibration methods in any capacity

• Background in experimental physics or instrumentation

Salary

• $33/hr

Location

1600 Bridge Pwky, Redwood City, CA. In person required.