Senior Validation Engineer – Autonomous Drone Systems

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Senior Software Systems Validation Engineer to lead end-to-end validation from simulation to flight testing of our autonomous drone delivery system. You will bridge Systems Engineering and Software Development, owning validation strategy and evidence to expose capability gains, gaps, regressions, and safety risks.

You will validate across aircraft performance, docking, and fleet orchestration, partnering with data teams to improve coverage while preserving velocity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
• 3+ years of software development, software systems engineering, or software validation experience with robotic systems.
• Experience in embedded Linux, perception, motion planning, navigation, control, estimation, dynamics or power management.

Responsibilities

• Define system-level validation strategy for software performance, reliability, and safety.
• Design and execute validation scenarios from simulation through full-system flight testing.
• Build metrics, visualizations, and automated tools to reveal capability changes and regressions.
• Set validation exit criteria to inform release, deployment, and operating-domain expansion decisions.
• Debug failures across simulation, hardware, firmware, embedded software, and application software.

Skills

Python

SQL

C++

Rust

MISRA C

Embedded Linux

Robotics validation

Education

BSc/MSc in CS

Tools

Git

Linux

ROS

Job description

Zipline is seeking a Senior Software Systems Validation Engineer to lead end-to-end validation from simulation to flight testing of our autonomous drone delivery system. You will bridge Systems Engineering and Software Development, owning validation strategy and evidence to expose capability gains, gaps, regressions, and safety risks.

You will validate across aircraft performance, docking, and fleet orchestration, partnering with data teams to improve coverage while preserving velocity.