Simulation Software Engineer

About Zipline

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible.

About You And The Role

The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations. Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe. We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.

What You'll Do

• Build the simulation platform: Develop the reusable infrastructure that powers simulation across the company, including execution, scheduling, orchestration, APIs, and developer tooling.
• Integrate with production software: Build interfaces that allow flight software, cloud services, embedded software, and hardware to execute inside deterministic virtual environments.
• Scale simulation: Scale from single-vehicle debugging to fleet-scale testing across thousands of scenarios in CI.
• Partner with engineers: Support teams building new tests, debugging failures, improving workflows, and expanding simulation capabilities.

Why This Role is Cross-Cutting

• 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.
• The Full system Hardware-In-The-Loop testing framework uses simulation for flight software validation.
• The Embedded and Ground teams use it to validate system integration, safety cases, and operational resilience.
• The CI/CD pipeline relies on simulation to catch regressions before they ever reach a flight zone.

Requirements

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience in C++ or Rust (Rust experience is a strong plus).
• Deep experience architecting, building, or maintaining complex robotics, aerospace, or distributed systems simulations/digital twins.
• Expertise in concepts like time synchronization, inter-process communication, and determinism within a systems-level or real-time context.
• Familiarity with physical modeling, kinematics, dynamics, or robotics simulation concepts.
• A passion for building enabling infrastructure and tools that allow Zipline engineers to simulate faster, test earlier, and deploy safer.

Location & Logistics

• This role is onsite in the Bay Area due to frequent cross-functional collaboration, access to flight test and HIL labs, and operational incident response.
• Occasional travel to field sites or test ranges may be required.
• You must be eligible to work in the US.