Perception Intern (Fall 2026)

About the role

The Droid Perception team at Zipline is responsible for developing and integrating perception systems that inform, validate, and augment the autonomy of Zipline's drone delivery systems. This role involves ideating, experimenting, and iterating on learning-based solutions for unique perception challenges, collaborating with cross-functional teams, and leveraging diverse data sources to train machine learning models.

Responsibilities

• Ideate, experiment, and iterate on learning-based solutions for unique perception challenges.
• Collaborate closely with team members to brainstorm and derive creative solutions from first principles.
• Leverage heterogeneous sources of data (real-world, simulation, and internet-scale data) to train machine learning models.
• Ship production code to train, validate, and integrate models into the perception system.
• Share findings and insights, fostering knowledge exchange across teams.

Requirements

• You must have completed the second year of your undergraduate studies. Masters and PhD students are also eligible.
• A proven history of quality ML research, reflected by publications in conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, CoRL, RSS, etc.
• Specific expertise in areas such as multi-view depth estimation, semantic segmentation, generative modeling, etc.
• Proficiency with deep learning frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Experience writing code in a production environment, e.g., at a previous internship.
• Ability to rapidly experiment, iterate, and adapt to new findings in a dynamic environment.

Qualifications

• You must have completed the second year of your undergraduate studies. Masters and PhD students are also eligible.
• A proven history of quality ML research, reflected by publications in conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, CoRL, RSS, etc.
• Specific expertise in areas such as multi-view depth estimation, semantic segmentation, generative modeling, etc.
• Proficiency with deep learning frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Experience writing code in a production environment, e.g., at a previous internship.
• Ability to rapidly experiment, iterate, and adapt to new findings in a dynamic environment.

Skills

• Strong background in machine learning, particularly in areas relevant to drone perception.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Ability to write and maintain production-quality code.
• Knowledge of computer vision techniques, including but not limited to multi-view depth estimation, semantic segmentation, and generative modeling.

Benefits

• Full-time position, in-person at our South San Francisco or Dallas office.
• Internship period from September to December, 2026.
• Housing stipend and relocation support available.
• Overtime pay and paid sick time.

Pay

$50 per hour.

Schedule

Full-time, in-person internship.