Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer - Long Range Platform

About the role

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine, and essential goods anytime, anywhere.

Responsibilities

• Own one or more end-to-end embedded subsystems (firmware, drivers, runtime, monitoring) for the long-range platform and be the primary technical owner for design, implementation, and production readiness.
• Deliver and maintain flight- and safety-critical code on microcontrollers (bare-metal/RTOS): drivers, device bring-up, real-time control interfaces, fault management, and graceful degradation logic.
• Define and ship measurable reliability and observability outcomes (MTTR, mission success rate, in-field fault rates, test coverage targets).
• Instrument systems so flight-data can be used to detect regressions and prioritize fixes.
• Lead hardware-in-the-loop, bench, and field validation for changes you introduce; partner with systems, hardware, test engineering, and operations to create repeatable test plans and failure-insertion exercises.
• Build and extend tooling for deterministic test, logging, post-flight analysis, and automated regression tests to accelerate safe deployments across the fleet.
• Triage and resolve high-severity field incidents: drive RCA, implement fixes, and own follow-through until fleet metrics demonstrate resolution.
• Collaborate closely with avionics, systems engineering, manufacturing, and flight operations to set integration boundaries, certification inputs, and release criteria for software changes.

Requirements

• Title/level: Senior Embedded Software Engineer as stated.
• Location: South San Francisco HQ.

What You'll Bring

• Must-have technical skills: substantial systems-level experience shipping embedded production code in C++ or Rust; strong familiarity with Python for test/telemetry tooling. Experience with bare-metal and RTOS environments is required; experience with embedded linux is nice to have.
• Production & safety experience: proven track record deploying and operating embedded software in safety- or mission-critical systems (aviation, robotics, industrial controls, or similar). Experience with fault management, deterministic real-time requirements, and validation strategies is required.
• Debugging & hardware bring-up: demonstrated ability to read schematics, bring up peripherals from datasheets, and debug hardware/software interaction using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, JTAG, and in-field telemetry.
• Ownership & outcomes: history of owning subsystem delivery end-to-end, shipping repeatable test suites, and meeting quantified reliability targets (provide examples in interview).
• Logistics & intensity: comfortable with field testing cadence, occasional travel to flight-test sites, and participating in incident response outside standard hours when critical fleet incidents occur.
• Education & experience: bachelor’s degree in EE/CS or equivalent experience; typically 5+ years in embedded/flight-critical systems OR equivalent demonstrated impact.

What Else You Need To Know

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!