Senior Path Planning Engineer - Routing Team

ABOUT ZIPLINE Zipline is at the forefront of a logistics revolution: We design, manufacture, and operate our own fleet of autonomous drones, and all ground-based equipment that supports flight, to deliver critical and lifesaving medicine to thousands of hospitals serving millions of people on multiple continents. Our mission is to provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies. Do you want to change the world? Join Zipline and help us make this a reality for billions of people. ABOUT YOU AND THE ROLE Zipline builds and operates fleets of delivery drones to get critical and life-saving products, fast, to where they’re needed. To power this, our routing team is building out state of the art path planning software to quickly produce flight paths which meet a high bar of safety, dynamic feasibility, and energy efficiency. In this role you will contribute to, build, and own portions of Zipline’s routing algorithms, including optimizing our current implementations, incorporating new state of the art techniques, and inventing novel approaches to solve this complex problem. In building this software, you will also contribute to Zipline’s strategic deconfliction solutions to increase vehicle-to-vehicle safety in the airspace. Our ideal candidate works well in startup environments, is comfortable wearing many hats, and can mentor other engineers on the team to produce impressive results. WHAT YOU'LL DO Build and own software for producing flight routes to support global operations for all of Zipline Create novel path planning and deconfliction algorithms that maximize complex objective functions through a high dimensional search space Be a technical lead and mentor to other engineers on the team WHAT YOU'LL BRING Experience building novel and complex path planning algorithms from the ground up Expertise in Python, C++, Golang, or other object oriented languages Understanding of a wide variety of planning algorithms and tradeoffs between them Understanding of how to work on a large, flexible, software stack capable of adapting to future requirements Understanding of automated testing practices and the ability to apply them to produce solid code that can be iterated on quickly A desire to own and produce highly efficient algorithms with a team A Strong Generalist Engineering mindset, ready to dive in and contribute across many facets of Zipline’s software NICE TO HAVES:  Experience with Rust and PyO3 Experience with numerical optimization Experience with high dimensional search space algorithms Experience with computational geometry Experience working with geographic data like Digital Elevation Models, large vector datasets, occupancy grids, and Lidar point clouds Experience using kubernetes, CDK/terraform, docker, and other cloud technologies Experience with AWS technologies WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW  The starting cash range for this role is $170,000 - $210,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; overtime pay; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more. Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities. We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!