Software Engineer - Operational Systems

WindBorne Systems is supercharging weather forecasts 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-tier investors, including Khosla Ventures and Footwork VC.

We're looking for a Software Engineer to own the operational software layer of our business. This is not a pure individual contributor role — it's a technical leadership position for someone who gets energy from making systems work and making other engineers' output better.

You'll sit within the operations org, and report to our COO, but you'll be a full citizen of the software team. You'll attend software planning and architecture meetings, stay current with the broader engineering roadmap, and serve as the primary technical point of contact between operational priorities and software execution.

The right person for this role is less a code wizard and more a force multiplier: someone who ensures that the code written by the engineers around them is good, purposeful, and serves the right goals.

Responsibilities

• Operational Systems— Be the technical owner of tools and systems that serve internal operations. Some of these are internal facing, and others touch external customers and contracts.

• Engineering direction for ops work — Other engineers will spend a significant portion of their time executing on your priorities. You'll be responsible for defining that work clearly, reviewing it rigorously, and ensuring what gets built is worth building.

• System design — When new operational needs arise, you'll be the one translating them into well-reasoned technical approaches. That includes scoping, sequencing, and making smart tradeoffs between speed and correctness.

• Code quality — You'll absorb a meaningful share of the technical review load from our software lead. That means reading code carefully, pushing back where needed, and holding a high bar — especially for code that touches production systems.

Skills and Qualifications

• At least five years of software engineering experience with demonstrated success owning high-priority software development efforts

• Full stack proficiency - frontend, backend, and the glue that ties it all together (Ruby on Rails, Python, Rust, Postgres)

• Experience building and maintaining internal tooling, developer infrastructure, or platform systems

• Proven track record of improving system reliability, observability, or quality — instrumentation, testing, incident response, or similar

• Able to translate ambiguous user needs into well-scoped technical requirements, with a calibrated sense of implementation complexity and effort

• Strong communication skills with internal stakeholders: equally comfortable gathering requirements from non-technical users and discussing tradeoffs with engineering peers

• Ability to obtain a security clearance

Nice to Have

• Experience with atmospheric, geospatial, or sensor data systems

• Familiarity with cloud platforms in government contexts (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government)

• Background in systems programming, real-time data processing, or scientific computing

• Prior work in aerospace, defense, or climate tech

• Active security clearance

Benefits

• 401(k)

• Dental insurance

• Health insurance

• Vision insurance

• Unlimited PTO

• Stock Option Plan

• Office food and beverages

Salary

• $150,000 - $220,000** We are considering a range of backgrounds and experience levels for this position and adjust our offers accordingly to be competitive with market rates.

Location

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