Simulation Software Engineer - Autonomous Drone Systems

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

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Simulation Software Engineer to build core infrastructure for digital twins and high‑fidelity virtual test environments. You will enable deterministic, faster‑than‑real‑time testing of flight software, cloud connectivity, and vehicle coordination across thousands of mission scenarios.

This role focuses on deep systems‑level software engineering, integrating complex flight software with synthetic environments and real hardware, to ensure safety and reliability of Zipline’s

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience in C++ or Rust (Rust is a strong plus).
• Demonstrated ability to reason about 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 in 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.
• Bonus: experience scaling simulation in CI, HIL, or formal verification methods.

Responsibilities

• Build the simulation platform: develop reusable infrastructure powering calibration across the company, including execution, scheduling, orchestration, APIs, and developer tooling.
• Integrate with production software: build interfaces enabling flight software, cloud services, embedded software, and hardware to run inside deterministic virtual environments.
• Scale simulation: extend from single-vehicle debugging to fleet-scale testing across thousands of scenarios in CI.
• Partner with engineers: support teams in creating tests, debugging failures, improving workflows, and expanding simulation capabilities.

Job description

Zipline is seeking a Simulation Software Engineer to build core infrastructure for digital twins and high‑fidelity virtual test environments. You will enable deterministic, faster‑than‑real‑time testing of flight software, cloud connectivity, and vehicle coordination across thousands of mission scenarios.

This role focuses on deep systems‑level software engineering, integrating complex flight software with synthetic environments and real hardware, to ensure safety and reliability of Zipline’s