Flight Controls Engineer Intern - Autonomous Flight Systems

Socket.dev; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 28,000 - 41,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline offers a Flight Controls Internship in South San Francisco or Dallas, focusing on autonomous flight software and real-world testing. You’ll learn to work with flight data, simulations and a global fleet, aiming to improve system performance and safety through practical, hands-on contributions.

You will gain experience in developing, testing, and validating control algorithms, while collaborating with a multidisciplinary team in a fast-moving, safety-conscious environment.

Qualifications

• Strong applied math skills and ability to reason about complex systems.
• Interest in simulations and hardware integration for aerospace applications.
• Experience or coursework in controls design and analysis.
• Proficiency in embedded software development (C, C++, Rust) and software collaboration (GitHub).
• Familiarity with technical computing tools (MATLAB, Python, Julia).

Responsibilities

• Contribute to design, implementation, testing, and release of flight algorithms for vehicle controllers.
• Create tools and tests to demonstrate performance and guard against regressions.
• Develop and improve simulation and controls analysis tools to predict performance and ensure safety.
• Analyze flight data to assess changes and identify improvements.
• Design onboard integrity tests and present results to the engineering team.

Skills

Applied math

Simulations

Controls development

Embedded C/C++

GitHub collaboration

Education

Engineering student or related field

Tools

MATLAB

Python

Julia

Job description

Zipline offers a Flight Controls Internship in South San Francisco or Dallas, focusing on autonomous flight software and real-world testing. You’ll learn to work with flight data, simulations and a global fleet, aiming to improve system performance and safety through practical, hands-on contributions.

You will gain experience in developing, testing, and validating control algorithms, while collaborating with a multidisciplinary team in a fast-moving, safety-conscious environment.