About the roleYou are responsible for creating the core decision-making framework, algorithms, and models that guide multi-aircraft coordinated wildfire suppression. At the nexus of the perception pipeline, suppression execution engine, and operator command interface, your systems will rapidly develop and adapt strategies in a changing wildfire environment to achieve suppression goals. You will collaborate directly with firefighters, pilots, and your engineering colleagues to determine and validate system requirements.
Responsibilities- Build and integrate mission-level autonomy frameworks for goal-oriented behavior, task assignment, and system-level coordination
- Enable intuitive human command and supervision, communicating intent, and building operator confidence in mission-critical contexts
- Develop algorithms for collaborative autonomy involving multiple aircraft
- Ensure real-time performance and reliability of autonomy software, especially under compute-constrained and communications-limited conditions.
- Design autonomy software with fault-tolerance, fail-safe behavior, and robustness to uncertain environments or degraded sensors.
- Validate and test in simulation and in flight, ensuring mission success in challenging conditions faced by firefighting aircraft
- Collaborate closely with other members of the engineering team to develop and test the algorithms that power the wildfire mission autonomy system
- Contribute to simulation environments for training, testing, and validation
Qualifications- Deep expertise (6+ years of experience) in software engineering for UAS, robotics, or other safety-critical applications
- Strong proficiency in C++14 (or newer) development for resource-limited environments
- Knowledge of planning, state machines, or behavior trees
- Background in robotics, control systems, or aerospace autonomy
- Familiarity with simulation tools (e.g., Unreal Engine, AirSim, AFSIM)
- Understanding of communication protocols, real-time constraints, and embedded systems
What will make you a great fit- You're excited about Rain's mission to stop wildfires before they grow out of control
- You thrive in small teams, where you can see the immediate impact of your knowledge and expertise
- You have experience with reinforcement learning or adaptive autonomy
- You're familiar with STANAG/DoD autonomy standards and DO-178C
- You've previously worked with uncrewed aerial systems, aviation, aerospace
- You've served as a firefighter
- You are willing to travel at least 15% of the year for validation testing
LocationThis is an on-site position. Our office is located in Alameda, California-just across the Bay from San Francisco. The office is easily accessible by ferry, bike and scooter, and there is ample parking.
