Senior Embedded Validation Engineer - Autonomous Drone Software

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

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Senior Embedded Software Validation Engineer to lead validation for avionics components, including the flight computer and related peripherals. You will ensure software executes reliably and deterministically, gathering evidence to expose capability gains, gaps, regressions, and safety risks to enable safe software releases.

You will design and drive validation across simulation, hardware, firmware, and application software, building automated tools and metrics to improve

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of software development, software systems engineering, or software validation experience with robotic systems.
• Experience with Embedded Linux, PREEMPT_RT, firmware/RTOS, safety-critical systems, 802.11, Ethernet.

Responsibilities

• Develop component-level validation strategy for software correctness, reliability, and performance on an Embedded Linux node.
• Design, implement, and execute nominal, stress, and edge-case scenarios from simulation through full-system flight testing.
• Develop and maintain hardware test infrastructure to meet the above objectives.
• Build metrics, visualizations, real-time performance and safety monitors, and automated tools that reveal capability changes and regressions.
• Set validation evidence and exit criteria that inform release, deployment, and operating-domain expansion decisions.
• Debug failures across simulation, hardware, firmware, embedded software, and application software; clearly document findings and elevate unresolved safety or performance risks.
• Partner with test infrastructure teams to increase automated validation coverage, efficiency, and precision while improving confidence in rapid development velocity.

Skills

Embedded Linux

Safety-critical systems

Rust / MISRA C / C++

Python / SQL

Validation strategies

Autonomous robotics

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s degree in CS/Engineering

Job description

Zipline is seeking a Senior Embedded Software Validation Engineer to lead validation for avionics components, including the flight computer and related peripherals. You will ensure software executes reliably and deterministically, gathering evidence to expose capability gains, gaps, regressions, and safety risks to enable safe software releases.

You will design and drive validation across simulation, hardware, firmware, and application software, building automated tools and metrics to improve