Simulation Infrastructure Engineer

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.

Zipline operates the world’s largest autonomous drone delivery system, ensuring life-saving medical supplies and commercial goods reach people regardless of geography. But to operate safely and scale globally, we need to test everything we build—at scale, without relying on real drones or physical hardware.

That’s where simulation comes in.

We're looking for a Simulation Systems Engineer to join the team responsible for the framework that powers flight software testing across our organization. This is systems-level simulation: high-performance, high-fidelity, custom-built tooling that lets us test autonomous flight logic, cloud connectivity, and vehicle coordination across thousands of scenarios—without ever leaving the ground.

This role is foundational to Zipline’s safety and scale, and critical to catching issues in software before they happen in the field. If you’re excited by the challenge of building deterministic, faster-than-realtime systems that mimic the real world and integrate flight software, fake cloud servers, and time manipulation—all while being refactored in Rust—read on.

• The simulation framework used across Zipline, including teams in Autonomy, Embedded Systems, Cloud, Ground Software, and Test Engineering.
  
• The core system that synchronizes simulation with flight software, including time control, input generation, and scenario orchestration—allowing teams to test everything from autonomy logic to map downloads to emergency workflows.
  
• A robust environment for testing real-world failure modes, fleet behaviors, and system edge cases at scale—without relying on physical aircraft or hardware.
  
• Integration layers that connect simulated components with fake cloud servers, simulated vehicles, and ground station software.
• Tools and APIs that allow teams to self-serve simulation workloads, from CI pipelines to exploratory testing.
  
• The transition of our in-house simulation system to Rust, improving speed, maintainability, and long-term scalability.

This is not a niche role within Autonomy—it’s a company-wide enabler.

• The Flight Software team uses simulation to validate onboard mission logic.
  
• The Test team uses it to explore pre-flight conditions and troubleshoot real-world anomalies.
  
• The Cloud team uses it to model server interactions like map updates, delivery instructions, and real-time comms.
• HIL
  
• The Embedded and Ground teams use it to validate system integration, safety cases, and operational resilience.
  
• And the CI/CD pipeline relies on simulation to catch regressions before they ever reach a flight zone.
  

If your passion lies in building infrastructure that unlocks fast, safe iteration across multiple engineering domains, this role is built for you.

• 5+ years of experience of software engineering skills and production experience in C++, or another systems language. (bonus points for Rust!)
  
• Experience building or maintaining robotics, embedded, aerospace, or distributed systems simulations.
  
• Comfort reasoning about time synchronization, determinism, inter-process communication, and system orchestration.
  
• Familiarity with high school-level physics, especially mechanics and motion, to support modeling at a systems level.
  
• A passion for building tools and infrastructure that enable others—this team exists to help Zipline engineers simulate faster, test earlier, and deploy safer.
  
• Bonus: experience scaling simulation in CI or HIL workflows.
  

• Are focused on graphics or visual simulation (e.g., game engines, VR environments).
  
• Work primarily with MATLAB, SIMULINK, or CFD modeling tools
  
• Require a fully remote role—this position is onsite in the Bay Area, due to frequent collaboration with cross-functional teams.

The starting cash range for this role is $180,000 - $225,000. 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.