Software Engineer, Test Infrastructure

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 B as fast as possible. 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.

About the Role

Zipline’s autonomous drone delivery system relies on software that behaves safely and predictably across sensor drivers, perception, navigation, guidance and control, motion planning, power management, actuator control and fleet autonomy. As a Senior Software Systems Validation Engineer, you will lead end-to-end evaluation from simulation through full-system flight testing. You will bridge Systems Engineering and Software Development, owning validation strategy and the evidence that exposes capability gains, gaps, regressions, and safety risks. Your work will inform engineering decisions for large-scale deployment and operating-domain expansion across aircraft performance, delivery operations, docking systems, and fleet orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Define system-level validation strategy for software performance, reliability, and safety.
• Design, implement, and execute nominal, adversarial, stress, and edge-case scenarios from simulation through full-system flight testing.
• Build metrics, visualizations, real-time performance and safety monitors, and automated tools that reveal capability changes and regressions.
• Set validation evidence and exit criteria that inform release, deployment, and operating-domain expansion decisions.
• Debug failures across simulation, hardware, firmware, embedded software, and application software; clearly document findings and escalate unresolved safety or performance risks.
• Partner with test infrastructure and data platform teams to increase automated validation coverage, efficiency, and precision while maintaining development and deployment velocity.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field.
• 3+ years of software development, software systems engineering, or software validation experience with robotic systems.
• Strong experience in one or more relevant domains: embedded Linux, perception, motion planning, navigation, control, estimation, dynamics, connected systems, or power management.
• Experience developing nominal, adversarial, stress, and edge-case validation for autonomous robotics.
• Experience root-causing failures in complex autonomous systems and working with large datasets in production pipelines.
• Proficiency with Python and SQL, plus programming languages used in safety-critical applications such as MISRA C, Rust, or C++.
• Experience applying risk-assessment tools and techniques and deriving software safety or performance requirements from functional safety requirements or similar requirements decompositions.

Pay

The starting cash range for this role is $150,000-$250,000. The final cash pay will depend on factors including experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. This position may be hired at one of two levels:

• Software Engineer, Test Infrastructure II: $150,000–$190,000
• Senior Software Engineer, Test Infrastructure: $190,000–$250,000

Level and base salary will be determined through the interview process. Factors may include relevant experience, technical proficiency, expected responsibilities, location, and internal equity. The total compensation package may also include equity compensation, discretionary annual or performance bonuses, sales incentives, benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance, and paid time off.