Staff Autonomous Motion-Planning Engineer

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Bonuses

Medical, dental and vision insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to advance autonomous flight systems and decision-making for real‑world delivery tasks. You will shape trajectory planning, safety, and system integration across perception, controls, and flight ops in a highly dynamic U.S.

market. You will lead the development of real‑time algorithms, validation, and reliability improvements, with a strong emphasis on safe operations, simulation, and scalable autonomy.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science or related field and 7+ years of experience building software for safety‑critical systems (aerospace/AV/robotics).
• Strong programming skills in Rust/C++/C for real-time, fault‑tolerant code on embedded/Linux.
• Depth in planning & search (e.g. A*/ anytime / RRT*/sampling), trajectory optimization/MPC—shipped on real robots/vehicles.
• Hands‑on with simulation at scale, SIL/HIL, log replay, and metrics‑driven validation.
• Evidence of shipping production‑grade autonomy through ambiguous, noisy conditions—owning the last mile to reliability.

Responsibilities

• Build real-time trajectory generation and decision‑making for autonomous flight (search-based, sampling, MPC, convex/non-convex optimization).
• Tackle joint optimization across safety, energy, time, and reliability—balancing mission goals with vehicle constraints.
• Plan in uncertain environments with complex dynamics: robustness to wind/turbulence, degraded sensors, and partial observability.
• Design safety‑critical software for avoiding obstacles and interfacing with humans while delivering and picking up packages
• Extend the autonomy stack for new aircraft and payloads; define clean interfaces with perception and controls.
• Prove it before flight: large-scale sim, SIL/HIL, log replay, and fault‑injection.
• Mine real fleet data to validate safety metrics, improve models, and burn down long‑tail failure modes.

Skills

Rust

C++

C

Real-time systems

Planning & search

Simulation

Education

Master's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Embedded/Linux

SIL

HIL

Job description

Zipline is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to advance autonomous flight systems and decision-making for real‑world delivery tasks. You will shape trajectory planning, safety, and system integration across perception, controls, and flight ops in a highly dynamic U.S.

market. You will lead the development of real‑time algorithms, validation, and reliability improvements, with a strong emphasis on safe operations, simulation, and scalable autonomy.