Base Salary
$180k - $260k/yr
Responsibilities
- Build and own infrastructure for validating autonomous features and system performance across planning, perception, and control.
- Design simulation tools and scenario-generation systems for large-scale, high-fidelity autonomy testing under real-world and edge-case conditions.
- Develop custom validation and testing tools that integrate with Zipline’s internal autonomy development stack.
- Create scalable automated systems to run, track, and analyze thousands of validation tasks.
- Collaborate with autonomy, systems, data, flight test, and QA engineers to codify metrics, safety thresholds, requirements, and real-world results.
- Establish software release-validation practices, documentation, standards, workflows, metrics, and evaluation methodologies for the autonomy organization.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience building software systems for simulation, testing, or safety validation, ideally in robotics, autonomy, aerospace, or other real-time safety-critical domains.
- Strong software engineering skills with proficiency in C++, Rust, or C; Python experience is a plus.
- Hands-on experience with simulation systems for robotics or autonomous systems, particularly for testing or validation.
- Experience building tools, platforms, or infrastructure used by other engineers.
- Understanding of validation methodologies, including defining metrics, evaluating system behavior, and testing complex electromechanical systems.
- Preferred qualifications include high-fidelity simulation or scenario-generation experience; large-scale or distributed systems experience; Kubernetes or AWS experience; familiarity with systems engineering concepts; exposure to planning, perception, and control autonomy stacks; and some exposure to machine learning systems.
- The role is not intended for primarily MATLAB/Simulink-based simulation, systems-engineering-only, infrastructure/DevOps-only, or QA/QC-focused backgrounds without significant software ownership.
Benefits
- Starting cash range is $180,000-$260,000 annually, with final pay based on experience, qualifications, skills, location, and projected impact.
- Total compensation may include equity, discretionary annual or performance bonuses, sales incentives, medical, dental, and vision insurance, and paid time off.
About Zipline
Zipline was founded to create the first logistics system that serves all humans equally. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges. Leveraging expertise in robotics and autonomy, Zipline designs, manufactures and operates the world’s largest automated delivery system. Zipline serves tens of millions of people around the world and is making good on the promise of building an equitable and more resilient global supply chain. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart and enabling leading healthcare providers to bring care into the home in the United States, Zipline is transforming the way goods move. By transitioning to clean, electric, instant logistics, we can decarbonize delivery, decrease road congestion, and reduce fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access for billions of people. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Zipline is inspiring people, governments, and businesses to imagine what is possible when goods can move as seamlessly as information. To join the team, check out our career page: https://flyzipline.com/careers/