Embedded Validation Engineer (HIL & Simulation)

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

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an Embedded Software Validation Engineer in California to build automated validation infrastructure for the embedded platform powering autonomous aircraft. You will design simulation and hardware-in-the-loop environments, develop automated test scenarios, and validate IPC, logging, OTA, and telemetry under realistic conditions.

The role focuses on scalable validation pipelines, reducing risk before flight and improving system reliability across the flight software stack.

Qualifications

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

Responsibilities

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

Skills

Embedded software

Rust

Python

Embedded Linux

IPC

Debugging

Test frameworks

Tools

HIL/SIM

Job description

Zipline is seeking an Embedded Software Validation Engineer in California to build automated validation infrastructure for the embedded platform powering autonomous aircraft. You will design simulation and hardware-in-the-loop environments, develop automated test scenarios, and validate IPC, logging, OTA, and telemetry under realistic conditions.

The role focuses on scalable validation pipelines, reducing risk before flight and improving system reliability across the flight software stack.