Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer — Real-Time C++/Rust

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

Benefits offered by this job

equity compensation

discretionary bonuses

medical, dental and vision insurance

paid time off

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a software engineer to own C++ firmware for a distributed fleet of aircraft MCUs and embedded Linux devices. You will work with hardware and software teams to deliver reliable flight-critical software for deployed aircraft worldwide.

You will design interfaces, optimize real-time performance, and develop tooling (including Rust-based simulations) to test firmware before field deployment. This role requires regular in-office work at our South San Francisco HQ.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering skills writing C++ for embedded or resource-constrained systems.
• Experience with embedded communications (Ethernet, serial) and hardware interfaces.
• Experience designing and debugging real-time firmware (scheduling, interrupts, concurrency).
• Experience building deployed embedded systems with attention to safety and reliability.
• Systems mindset and debugging intuition; ability to narrow down issues.
• Experience implementing peripheral drivers from schematics/datasheets for prototype hardware.

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 MCU systems and communication buses across startup, operation, fault handling, and recovery.
• Optimize real-time behavior: CPU utilization, memory, scheduling latency, timing jitter, resource contention.
• Develop metrics, monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for field deployment at scale.
• Develop Rust-based tooling and software-in-the-loop simulations to validate firmware.

Skills

C++ (embedded)

Embedded systems

Real-time firmware

Debugging

Rust tooling

Peripheral drivers

Communication protocols

Tools

Ethernet

Serial interfaces

Linux (embedded)

Job description

Zipline is seeking a software engineer to own C++ firmware for a distributed fleet of aircraft MCUs and embedded Linux devices. You will work with hardware and software teams to deliver reliable flight-critical software for deployed aircraft worldwide.

You will design interfaces, optimize real-time performance, and develop tooling (including Rust-based simulations) to test firmware before field deployment. This role requires regular in-office work at our South San Francisco HQ.