Description
The Head of Software will own the architecture and implementation of Mantari's full-stack weather intelligence platform - the software backbone that powers sensing, data assimilation, forecasting, analytics, and decision delivery.
You'll design and lead the buildout of the core platform that ingests global sensor data, runs large-scale model training and inference, manages distributed compute pipelines, and serves forecast and analytic products to customers via APIs and integrated applications. This is a systems leadership role: you'll define the architecture, hire and mentor the engineering team, and ensure the platform meets Mantari's demanding standards for scale, resilience, latency, and security.
You'll partner closely with the Head of Weather (who owns forecasting science), and Growth team and Forward Deployed Engineers(who integrate customer systems). Your job: turn the full-stack vision into code and build the infrastructure of foresight.
Key Responsibilities
- Architect Mantari's end-to-end platform, spanning:
- Sensor platform autonomy and edge compute
- Sensor data ingestion and transformation
- Data assimilation and model runtime orchestration
- Scalable model training and distributed inference
- API services and analytics layers
- Secure multi-tenant customer delivery
- Lead software design for modular, cloud-native, and high-availability systems (microservices, container orchestration, data streaming)
- Define the platform runtime -- how models (physics-based, hybrid, AI) are deployed, scheduled, and versioned. Verification/validation for customers is critical!
- Build developer velocity with best-in-class CI/CD, observability, and deployment pipelines
- Own cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS/Azure), including cost optimization, GPU fleet management, and multi-region scaling
- Establish data platform foundations (storage, ETL, metadata, lineage, reanalysis)
- Collaborate with ML and atmospheric science teams to align software design with model and data needs
- Set technical standards across codebase, security, APIs, and reliability
- Recruit, mentor, and scale Mantari's software engineering team
Requirements
- BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field
- 8+ years in software architecture and systems engineering
- Proven experience designing and operating large-scale, cloud-native platforms (multi-service, distributed, high-throughput)
- Deep expertise in:
- Cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure)
- Container orchestration (Kubernetes, Nomad, Slurm)
- Data streaming and pipelines (Kafka, Beam, Ray, Spark)
- Microservice design, API gateways, and backend architecture
- Strong foundation in DevOps: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and observability
- Experience supporting ML/AI pipelines (training, inference, versioning) at scale
- Track record of leading teams delivering production-critical platforms
Bonus Qualifications
- Background building real-time analytics, or computing systems/earth observation systems
- Familiarity with GPU-accelerated workloads, distributed training, or model serving at scale
- Experience integrating multi-modal data (satellite, sensor, remote sensing, IoT)
- Knowledge of forecasting systems, data assimilation, or simulation pipelines
- Prior experience in high-stakes environments (aerospace, defense, energy, or autonomy)
- Comfort working across disciplines - science, ML, software, product
- Strong communication skills and leadership presence
How We Work
- Small, senior team; high autonomy, high expectations.
- Collaborate closely with the founding team and SMEs to push the boundaries of observation-driven AI-native weather forecasting, and turn weather into an advantage, not a roadblock.
- LA HQ required.
- Equity upside commensurate with being one of the first core team members. Competitive salary, full benefits, and hardware budget.