Senior Embedded Validation Engineer – Avionics

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

Job summary

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. Zipline’s avionics software team owns the flight computer operating system and platform services, and seeks a Senior Embedded Software Validation Engineer to lead validation for avionics components, ensuring reliable and deterministic software execution.

Your work will define validation strategies, run simulations to flight tests, and create automated tooling to surface capability changes and risk, enabling safe, rapid

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.
• Strong experience in Embedded Linux, PREEMPT_RT, firmware / RTOS, safety-critical systems, 802.11, Ethernet.
• Experience developing validation strategies for autonomous robotics.
• Experience root-causing failures in complex autonomous systems.
• Proficiency with Rust or other safety-critical languages such as MISRA C/C++, or C++.
• Familiarity with Python and SQL.
• Experience deriving software safety or performance requirements from functional safety requirements.

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

5+ years of software development

Embedded Linux

PREEMPT_RT

firmware / RTOS

safety-critical systems

Rust

MISRA C/C++

Python

SQL

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science/Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field

Job description

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. Zipline’s avionics software team owns the flight computer operating system and platform services, and seeks a Senior Embedded Software Validation Engineer to lead validation for avionics components, ensuring reliable and deterministic software execution.

Your work will define validation strategies, run simulations to flight tests, and create automated tooling to surface capability changes and risk, enabling safe, rapid