Embedded Software Engineer, Validation

JobCubby; South San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an Embedded Software Validation Engineer to build automated validation systems for its safety-critical embedded platform powering autonomous aircraft. You’ll develop simulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) infrastructure, create automated test scenarios, and ensure reliability across IPC, logging, OTA updates, and cloud telemetry.

You will collaborate across the Flight Software organization, improving testability and validation strategies, and contribute to CI/CD workflows

Qualifications

• Experience developing embedded or systems software.
• Professional experience with Rust, Python, or similar programming languages.
• Experience working with embedded Linux systems.
• Strong understanding of concurrency, networking, IPC, and distributed/multi-process systems.
• Experience designing automated test frameworks or validation infrastructure.
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across software and hardware boundaries.
• Ability to collaborate closely with software engineers to improve system quality and testability.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain automated validation infrastructure for embedded platform software.
• Build simulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test environments.
• Develop automated test scenarios covering IPC, logging/observability, bridges, OTA updates, and telemetry.
• Design tests for functionality, reliability, performance, and fault conditions.
• Develop test suites for stress, endurance, regression, and fault injection in distributed embedded systems.
• Collaborate with Embedded Platform engineers to improve testability and validation strategies.
• Build tooling for automated test orchestration, execution, reporting, and dashboards.
• Contribute to CI pipelines and automated validation workflows.
• Investigate failures across simulation, HIL, and production to identify root causes.
• Occasionally contribute improvements to production embedded software to increase reliability.

Skills

Embedded software

Rust

Python

Embedded Linux

IPC

Observability

Automation testing

CI/CD

Debugging

HIL

Tools

Embedded Linux

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.

About You and The Role

We are looking for an Embedded Software Engineer to build the automated validation systems that ensure the reliability of the embedded platform powering autonomous aircraft operating in safety-critical environments. This role sits within the Embedded Platform team, which develops the foundational middleware and infrastructure used throughout the flight software stack. Our systems provide critical capabilities including interprocess communication (IPC), logging and observability, communication bridges, over-the-air (OTA) software updates, and live telemetry between aircraft and cloud services. As an Embedded Software Validation Engineer, you will design and build the simulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) infrastructure used to validate these platform services. Working closely with software engineers across the Flight Software organization, you will develop comprehensive automated test scenarios that verify functionality, performance, reliability, and fault tolerance before software reaches an aircraft. This is a software engineering role focused on building scalable validation infrastructure, not manual testing.

What You'll Do

• Design, implement, and maintain automated validation infrastructure for embedded platform software
• Build simulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test environments that exercise platform services under realistic operating conditions
• Develop automated test scenarios covering core platform capabilities including:
  • interprocess communication (IPC)
  • logging and observability
  • communication bridges
  • over-the-air (OTA) update systems
  • live telemetry and cloud connectivity
• Design tests that validate functionality, reliability, performance, and behavior under fault conditions
• Develop stress, endurance, regression, and fault-injection test suites for distributed embedded systems
• Partner closely with Embedded Platform engineers throughout the software development lifecycle to improve testability and define validation strategies during feature design
• Build tooling for automated test orchestration, execution, reporting, and dashboards
• Contribute to continuous integration pipelines and automated validation workflows
• Investigate failures across simulation, HIL, and production environments to identify root causes
• Occasionally contribute improvements to production embedded software that increase reliability, observability, or testability
• Build automated validation infrastructure that enables engineers to rapidly verify platform changes with confidence
• Increase coverage of simulation and HIL testing across the Embedded Platform stack
• Identify reliability and performance issues before they reach flight hardware
• Improve the observability and testability of core middleware through close collaboration with platform engineers
• Enable the Flight Software organization to move faster while maintaining the reliability expected of safety-critical systems

What You'll Bring

Required

• Experience developing embedded or systems software
• Professional experience with Rust, Python, or similar programming languages
• Experience working with embedded Linux systems
• Strong understanding of systems-level concepts including:
  • concurrency
  • networking
  • interprocess communication
  • distributed or multi-process systems
• Experience designing automated test frameworks or validation infrastructure
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across software and hardware boundaries
• Ability to collaborate closely with software engineers to improve system quality and testability

Preferred

• Experience building Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) or simulation-based validation systems
• Experience in safety-critical or high-reliability industries such as aerospace, automotive, robotics, industrial systems, or medical devices
• Experience with autonomous systems or robotics
• Experience validating distributed embedded systems
• Familiarity with OTA update systems, observability platforms, or telemetry infrastructure
• Experience with performance testing, stress testing, fault injection, or resilience testing
• Experience building automated test orchestration, dashboards, and reporting systems
• Familiarity with CI/CD systems for embedded software development

What Else You Need To 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.

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!

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.