Computational Physics Intern (Summer 2027)

Namely; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 22,000 - 36,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline, the world’s leading drone-delivery company, is seeking an engineering intern to join the Systems Modeling Team and work on system-level problems. You will help design and evaluate models that drive aircraft and fleet decisions, balancing performance and reliability.

You will develop tools, run simulations, and analyze data to support rapid iteration and informed tradeoffs in real-world constraints. This role offers hands-on experience with cutting-edge autonomous logistics systems.

Qualifications

• Fundamental physics understanding: energy, heat transfer, dynamics, fluids.
• Interest in building computational tools and modeling.
• Ability to work across multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience with simulation or modeling projects (academic or personal).

Responsibilities

• Develop computational tools to automate high-level design trades, optimizations, and sensitivity studies
• Improve the performance and flexibility of simulation frameworks
• Build physics-based models that underlie aircraft performance simulations
• Analyze test data to validate vehicle component models

Skills

Python

MATLAB

Julia

Rust

Numerical methods

Physics fundamentals

Systems modeling

Tools

MATLAB

Python

Julia

Rust

Job description

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. 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.

About the Systems Modeling Team

The Systems Modeling Team has tremendous power to shape Zipline’s products. We develop physics-based models and use them to architect our aircraft, as well as the supporting logistics system. Using simulation, we can rapidly explore a vast array of designs to optimize future products, and we can find ways to squeeze more performance out of our existing products.

Systems Modeling brings diverse teams and fields together (e.g. electrical, thermal, mechanical, aerodynamics, battery chemistry, controls, fleet operations, economics) to gain new insights. We translate technical conversations into rigorously framed engineering problems. We value asking pertinent questions and generating coherent answers.

The Role

Leading the way in drone delivery requires pushing the limits of individual component technologies and carefully orchestrating which ones we put together to optimize the performance of the complete vehicle. How much of the benefit of a larger motor is counteracted by its aerodynamic penalty? How much range are we willing to give up for extra payload capacity? How do we optimally control battery charging – electrically and thermally – to strike a balance between turnaround time and battery longevity?

Answering these types of questions requires high-caliber computational tools. Zipline is seeking an engineering intern that can understand system-level problem statements, appreciate the tradeoffs between accuracy and computational efficiency, and architect elegant code tools. The outputs of these tools will directly drive critical architectural and operational decisions at the aircraft and fleet level.

What You'll Do

• Develop computational tools to automate high-level design trades, optimizations, and sensitivity studies
• Improve the performance and flexibility of simulation frameworks
• Build physics-based models that underlie aircraft performance simulations
• Analyze test data to validate vehicle component models

What You'll Bring

• A drive to help people and make the world a better place
• A basic understanding of fundamental physics:
  • Energy and power
  • Heat transfer
  • Electrical circuits
  • Dynamics (kinematics, forces, moments, acceleration/rotation)
  • Fluids and aerodynamics
• Passion for tackling challenging multidisciplinary problems
• The ability to recognize tradeoffs in the design of complex computational analysis frameworks
• Expertise in Matlab, Python, Julia, Rust, or similar; for modeling, simulation, optimization, and/or data analysis
• Proficiency in numerical methods

Nice to have:

• Basic understanding of batteries, electric motors, and/or aircraft dynamics; and typical approaches to modeling them
• Experience interpreting experimental data
• Experience with model-based systems design, ideally in an extracurricular setting

What Else You Should 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.

Zipline is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your point of contact at Zipline know if you require any accommodations throughout your interview process.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.