Senior PX4 Developer

Job Description

Rainmaker builds systems to make it rain. Our autonomous drone fleets and weather modification platform operate worldwide: expanding freshwater supplies, protecting agriculture, and proving that cloud seeding works at scale.

You are:

A seasoned software engineer with a background in drone autonomy

Fast, thoughtful, autonomous, and opinionated

Willing to relocate to El Segundo, California

What you’ll work on:

Contribute to our drone autonomy software stack end-to-end as a domain expert

Modify and extend PX4 firmware for custom use cases and flight behaviors

Develop firmware for embedded systems across power, peripherals, and sensing

Support simulation-based testing in Gazebo, HITL, and SITL environments

Assist with flight test support, log analysis, and software debugging

What we’re looking for:

3+ years of professional experience developing software for PX4/ArduPilot systems

Experience shipping production code in Rust, plus C++ or Python

Experience developing firmware for ESP32, RP2040, or similar embedded targets

Comfort with low-level peripheral buses: CAN, UART, I2C, SPI

Experience with real-time pub/sub middleware (Zenoh, DDS, ROS 2, MQTT, or similar)

Working knowledge of MAVLink and typical autopilot integration patterns

Rainmaker is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Rainmaker is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

Rainmaker participates in E-Verify. To learn more, including your rights and responsibilities, please visit E-Verify.gov.

Full-time