Autonomy Software Engineer, Flight Management & Safety

About Zipline
Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. We build, manufacture and operate the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. 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 home healthcare in the U.S., we are decarbonizing delivery, reducing congestion and fossil-fuel use, and building a more resilient global supply chain.

About You & the Role
Own the flight-critical runtime that keeps Zipline aircraft in a known safe state—no matter what. You will architect and ship the autonomy safety layer that orchestrates missions, detects and diagnoses faults, and executes mitigation and recovery across planning, perception and controls. This is deep systems work in Rust/C++ with tight real-time constraints: you will make high-judgment design decisions, prove them in SIL/HIL and flight logs, and raise the bar on reliability for a global, safety-critical fleet.

What You’ll Do

• Design the mission/flight manager: build state machines and orchestration logic for mission sequencing, safe-state transitions and behavior gating under latency and resource constraints.
• Own fault management end-to-end: implement detection, isolation, mitigation and recovery (FIMR) for sensors, compute, comms, power and actuation while ensuring graceful degradation.
• Ship flight-critical Rust/C++: develop and maintain core onboard components with observability and testability (deterministic replay, assertions, invariants).
• Prove safety before flight: define success criteria and build scenario libraries, SIL/HIL harnesses, log-replay tools and fault injection to validate edge-case behaviors.
• Integrate across autonomy: partner with planning, perception and controls to set interfaces, hazards/assumptions and escalation paths; codify contracts the runtime enforces.
• Close the loop with operations: convert fleet telemetry and incident reviews into requirements and fixes to improve MTBF/MTTR and reduce intervention rates.
• Lead with systems judgment: write design docs, perform hazard analysis (FMEA/STPA), run reviews and mentor engineers on deep-stack ownership.

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years building production software for robotics, aerospace, AV or other safety-critical embedded systems.
• Expert in Rust and/or C++ for real-time, fault-tolerant applications on embedded Linux/RTOS.
• Clear systems thinking: interface design, resource budgeting and trade-offs under timing/safety/power constraints.
• Hands-on with SIL/HIL, scenario validation, log replay and fault injection; you measure reliability.
• Track record shipping autonomy features (mission logic, supervision, watchdogs, health monitoring) into noisy real-world environments.
• Comfort with HW/SW co-design: able to reason about sensors, compute, comms and actuators to make robust software decisions.
• Strong documentation and communication; complex safety decisions are legible and auditable.

In-Office Role
This is an in-office position based at our South San Francisco HQ.

Compensation
Starting cash range: $200,000 – $265,000 annually. Final pay depends on experience, qualifications and impact and may include equity, bonuses and benefits.

Zipline is an equal-opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion.