Senior Software Engineer (Autonomy Simulation & Validation)

Zipline; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is building the world’s largest autonomous logistics system and seeks a deeply technical software engineer for the Autonomy Validation team in San Francisco. You will own the validation infrastructure across planning, perception, and control, building simulation tools and scalable testing workflows for real-world conditions.

You’ll craft internal platforms for validation that enable simulation at scale, rigorous scenario testing, and automated analysis, directly shaping how autonomy

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building or working with simulation systems for robotics or autonomous systems, particularly for testing or validation.
• Experience building tools, platforms, or infrastructure used by other engineers.
• Understanding of validation methodologies, including defining metrics and evaluating system behavior.
• Exposure to autonomy stacks (planning, perception, control) and safety-critical domains.

Responsibilities

• Build and own infrastructure for validating autonomous features and system performance across planning, perception, and control.
• Design and develop simulation tools and scenario generation for large-scale, high-fidelity testing.
• Develop custom validation tools that plug into internal autonomy development stack.
• Create scalable, reliable, automated solutions for running thousands of validation tasks and tracking results.

Skills

C/C++/Rust

Python

Simulation software

Robotics

Autonomy validation

Testing infrastructure

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

AWS

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

Job description

• Zipline is building the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering vital medical and commercial supplies across the globe. As we scale our operations and extend into more complex, safety-critical environments, the ability to validate and prove our autonomy performance at scale becomes absolutely essential
• We’re looking for a deeply technical software engineer to join the Autonomy Validation team — a core team responsible for building the infrastructure, tools, and frameworks that support software validation across the entire Autonomy organization. This includes planning, perception, control, and all of the decision-making logic that powers our self-flying aircraft
• Our autonomy stack is highly custom-built, and while that gives us unmatched control and performance, it also means standard out-of-the-box testing tools don’t work. In this role, you’ll take ownership of developing robust internal platforms for validation — enabling both simulation at scale and rigorous scenario testing — so that autonomy engineers can ship with confidence
• This is not a QA role. It’s a foundational software engineering position building critical systems that will directly shape how we test, verify, and deploy autonomy safely around the world
• Build and own the infrastructure for validating autonomous features and system performance across planning, perception, and control
• Design and develop simulation tools and scenario generation for large-scale and high-fidelity testing of autonomy under real-world and edge-case conditions
• Develop custom tools for validation and testing of autonomy components that plug into our internal autonomy development stack
• Create scalable, reliable, and automated solutions for running, tracking, and analyzing thousands of validation tasks across autonomy org
• Collaborate deeply with:
• Autonomy engineers, to understand how system behavior should be evaluated
• Systems and data engineers, to ensure metrics, safety thresholds, and requirements are codified in test infrastructure
• Flight test and QA teams, to connect real-world results back into test tools and CI loops
• Establish best practices for software release validation, helping ensure our autonomy stack is safe, measurable, and production-ready
• Contribute to internal docs, standards, and validation workflows that scale across the autonomy organization
• Define validation methodologies and metrics, determining how new autonomy features should be evaluated and measured in simulation

Hands-on experience building or working with simulation systems for robotics or autonomous systems, particularly for testing or validationStrong software engineering skills with proficiency in C++, Rust, or C (Python is a plus for tooling and scripting)5+ years of experience building software systems for simulation, testing, or safety validation — ideally in robotics, autonomy, aerospace, or other real-time, safety-critical domainsExperience building tools, platforms, or infrastructure used by other engineersUnderstanding of validation methodologies, including defining metrics, evaluating system behavior, and testing complex electromechanical systemsExperience with high-fidelity simulation or scenario generation frameworksExperience with large-scale or distributed systems (e.g., cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, AWS)Familiarity working with systems engineering concepts (requirements, safety constraints, metrics)Exposure to autonomy stacks (planning, perception, control)Some exposure to machine learning systems (not required)