Simulation Platform Engineer — Digital Twins for Autonomous Flight

Zipline; Ann Arbor (MI); On-site; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Simulation Software Engineer to build and evolve the core infrastructure for validating our robotics fleet software through high-performance, deterministic digital twins and time-manipulation. You will create a scalable, hardware-in-the-loop capable virtual test environment that enables faster, safer iteration across autonomous flight logic and cloud coordination.

This role demands deep systems-level software engineering experience in C++ or Rust, with a focus on reliability

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience in C++ or Rust.
• Experience with large software systems, APIs, concurrency, debugging, and software architecture.
• Deep experience architecting, building, or maintaining complex robotics, aerospace, or distributed systems simulations/digital twins.
• Expertise in time synchronization, inter-process communication, and determinism within a systems-level or real-time context.
• Familiarity with physical modeling, kinematics, dynamics, or robotics simulation concepts.
• A passion for building enabling infrastructure and tools that allow Zipline engineers to simulate faster, test earlier, and deploy safer.

Responsibilities

• Build the simulation platform powering company-wide simulation infrastructure, including execution, scheduling, orchestration, APIs, and tooling.
• Integrate with production software to run flight software, cloud services, embedded software, and hardware inside deterministic virtual environments.
• Scale simulation from single-vehicle debugging to fleet-scale testing across thousands of scenarios in CI.
• Partner with engineers to support tests, debug failures, improve workflows, and expand simulation capabilities.

Skills

C++

Rust

Distributed systems

Concurrency

Large software systems

Determinism

Tools

CI/CD

HIL

Job description

Zipline is seeking a Simulation Software Engineer to build and evolve the core infrastructure for validating our robotics fleet software through high-performance, deterministic digital twins and time-manipulation. You will create a scalable, hardware-in-the-loop capable virtual test environment that enables faster, safer iteration across autonomous flight logic and cloud coordination.

This role demands deep systems-level software engineering experience in C++ or Rust, with a focus on reliability