Embedded Firmware Engineer — Real‑Time, Hybrid

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Discretionary bonuses

Medical, dental & vision insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Zipline, a leader in autonomous drone logistics, seeks an embedded software engineer to own C++ firmware for a distributed fleet of aircraft microcontrollers. You will collaborate with hardware and systems engineers to deliver reliable, observable software for field deployment.

You will design interfaces, optimize real-time performance, and build tooling in Rust for simulations and validation. This role requires a safety-conscious mindset and hands-on experience with embedded systems.

Qualifications

• Experience writing C++ for embedded or resource-constrained systems.
• Experience with embedded communications (Ethernet, serial).
• Experience designing and debugging real-time firmware (scheduling, interrupts, concurrency).
• Experience deploying embedded systems with safety and reliability considerations.
• Ability to debug at hardware boundary using schematics and datasheets.

Responsibilities

• Design and build C++ firmware for a distributed system of aircraft microcontrollers.
• Develop reliable Ethernet, serial, and other microcontroller communication interfaces.
• Define platform-level interfaces and reusable firmware components supporting multiple subsystems.
• Own the performance of microcontroller systems and communication buses across startup, RT, faults, and recovery.
• Optimize real-time behavior (CPU, memory, latency, jitter, contention).
• Develop metrics, monitoring, and troubleshooting for field deployment at scale.
• Develop Rust-based tooling and SIL simulations to test firmware behaviour.

Skills

C++

Embedded systems

Real-time firmware

Diagnostics/Observability

Problem solving

Team collaboration

Tools

Ethernet

Serial interfaces

Rust tooling

Software-in-the-loop (SIL) simulations

Job description

Zipline, a leader in autonomous drone logistics, seeks an embedded software engineer to own C++ firmware for a distributed fleet of aircraft microcontrollers. You will collaborate with hardware and systems engineers to deliver reliable, observable software for field deployment.

You will design interfaces, optimize real-time performance, and build tooling in Rust for simulations and validation. This role requires a safety-conscious mindset and hands-on experience with embedded systems.