Controls Engineer Intern (Summer 2027)

Zipline; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 3,444,000 - 4,822,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

In-person internship

Mentorship

Job summary

Zipline invites an intern to join the Flight Controls team in a hands-on role at our South San Francisco or Dallas offices. You will work on real flight software and simulation tools to improve autonomous delivery systems, with mentorship and impactful projects that fly into production.

The internship runs Summer 2027,.full-time, in-person, May/June to August/September, providing exposure to data-driven flight testing, control algorithms, and end-to-end system validation.

Qualifications

• Experience with embedded software development and data-driven debugging.
• Exposure to flight controls or autonomous systems is a plus.
• Ability to collaborate in a multi-developer environment and communicate results clearly.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to design, implementation, testing and release of flight control software components.
• Develop and improve simulation and controls analysis tools to predict vehicle performance.
• Analyze flight data to assess changes, regressions, and potential improvements.

Skills

C/C++

Rust

MATLAB

Python

Github

Simulation

Control theory

Education

B.S. in engineering or related field

Tools

Github

Job description

• Zipline’s people thrive on finding elegant solutions to complex problems, given what exists today and what we can develop to maturity quickly and confidently. We stay close to our customers, learn what really works, and find where we can put the leverage to make a big difference for them now
• As an intern on the Flight Controls team, you will learn how we fly autonomous aircraft in a range of challenging flight conditions. Using data from flight testing and simulation as well as our global fleet of customer aircraft, you will be looking for insights that can help improve our design. Through this you’ll have the opportunity to make changes to our systems that will measurably improve our product - your work will not just be theoretical; you will have the opportunity to see your contributions fly!
• Our Flight Controls team is at the heart of Zipline’s product success - we are responsible for developing, testing and maintaining some of the critical flight software systems that enable our aircraft to complete missions autonomously, from takeoff through to predicting and executing a successful delivery, through to landing safely and accurately
• We develop novel solutions to give us the responsiveness, robustness and quality we need to ensure our delivery platforms can function in a wide range of increasingly challenging conditions and truly serve everyone in the world equally
• Contribute to the design, implementation, testing and release of innovative flight algorithms that improve the operational performance of our vehicle controllers
• Create tools and tests to demonstrate your design performance and protect against software regressions, using both theoretical guarantees and simulations
• Develop and improve simulation and other controls analysis tools so we can predict vehicle performance ahead of time and prove safety and reliability
• Analyze flight data to assess recent changes and upgrades, looking for regressions and potential areas for future improvement
• Design onboard integrity tests to communicate when the system performance is degraded
• Present key results and changes to the broader engineering team
• Our internships are full-time positions, in-person at our South San Francisco or Dallas office. We will host our Summer 2027 interns from May/June to August/September

Software engineering skills, preferably with both embedded software (C, C++, Rust) and technical computing (MATLAB, python, Julia, etc.). Experience with Github and working in a multi-developer environment is an advantageYou think simulations and working with hardware are both funExposure in one or more of the following areas: precision integrated inertial navigation, dynamic modeling of complex systems, linear control analysis, or optimal control with uncertaintyYour applied math skills stand out even among aerospace engineersYou have owned and developed controls solutions for a team project, thesis, or competition