Staff Embedded Software Engineer
About Zipline
Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating 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, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.
Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.
As a staff embedded software engineer at Zipline, you will be responsible for building the flight software that enables a highly maneuverable aircraft to safely fly over millions of homes and make deliveries day-in and day-out. You will work closely with a range of other disciplines to ensure each aircraft seamlessly transitions from our manufacturing lines to being a participant in the largest drone delivery network in the world.
Our technical stack is a distributed system of desktop-grade Linux compute, microcontrollers, and dozens of peripherals such as redundant comms links, sensors, and actuators. We are hiring for detail-oriented engineers who will bring a generalist mindset and expertise in at least one of these technical domains: safety-critical Linux, real-time firmware applications, core onboard libraries such as high-throughput messaging and redundant logging, or embedded tooling.
What You'll Do
- Design and build the software architecture necessary to run everything from critical flight software to inter-connected ground-based hardware on embedded Linux systems
- Develop kernel and userspace drivers for production and prototype sensors, and refine sensor data APIs for perception, navigation and other autonomy software engineers
- Design and build the software necessary to run critical flight and safety processes on a network of microcontrollers, from bootloaders to network drivers to embedded applications
- Analyze the runtime characteristics of our avionics software in flight to build confidence in its performance, focusing on re-usable, maintainable software and optimizing where required
- Understand and improve the reliability of the flight software system as a whole, working with hardware and systems engineers to develop comprehensive fault management strategies and hardware-in-the-loop tests
- Develop metrics, monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities to prepare the system for field deployment at scale
- Design and build data collection and testing tools to support early stage evaluation of new sensors, communications systems, and edge compute platforms
What You'll Bring
- Strong software engineering skills, with proficiency in at least one strongly typed language. We use Rust and C++ onboard, and python for tooling.
- Excitement to contribute across the stack to solve problems from end-to-end. We use Yocto to build our in-house Linux distribution, and an RTOS on our microcontrollers.
- Expertise in embedded systems development.
- Strong software architecture skills, having designed and shipped solutions for complicated real-world use cases.
- Strong technical leadership skills and experience owning large technical systems that other engineers will contribute to.
Our team uses a hybrid in-office and distributed work environment, centered around our headquarters in South San Francisco, CA. You must be able to work from the office on a regular basis.
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; 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, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.
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!