Controls Engineer Intern (Summer 2027)

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 52,000 - 68,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline’s Flight Controls team is seeking an intern to learn how we fly autonomous aircraft in challenging conditions. You will work with flight testing data and our global fleet to identify insights that improve design, with tangible contributions that fly.

Internship is full-time and in-person at South San Francisco or Dallas, with a Summer 2027 timeline from May/June to August/September. Applicants are limited to three applications in 30 days.

Qualifications

• Strong applied mathematics skills relevant to aerospace controls.
• Interest in simulations and hardware integration.
• Experience owning and developing control solutions for a team project, thesis, or competition.
• Exposure to one or more: precision inertial navigation, dynamic modeling, linear control analysis, or optimal control with uncertainty.
• Software engineering skills: embedded software (C, C++, Rust) and technical computing (MATLAB, Python, Julia). Github experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to design, implementation, testing and release of flight algorithms for vehicle controllers.
• Create tools and tests to demonstrate performance and protect against regressions.
• Develop simulation and control analysis tools to predict performance and prove safety.
• Analyze flight data to assess changes, regressions and future improvements.
• Design onboard integrity tests to indicate degraded system performance.
• Present results and changes to the engineering team.

Skills

Applied math

Control systems

Simulations

Software engineering

Tools

C/C++

Rust

MATLAB

Python

Julia

Github

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.

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 Flight Controls Team

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.

The Role

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!

What You’ll Do

• 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

What You’ll Bring

• Your applied math skills stand out even among aerospace engineers.
• You think simulations and working with hardware are both fun.
• You have owned and developed controls solutions for a team project, thesis, or competition
• Exposure in one or more of the following areas: precision integrated inertial navigation, dynamic modeling of complex systems, linear control analysis, or optimal control with uncertainty.
• 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 advantage.

What Else You Should Know

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.

Candidates are limited to three (3) applications within a 30-day period.

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!

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.