Staff Embedded Firmware Engineer, Drone Flight Systems

Telemetry Today LLC; South San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grant

Performance bonuses

Health insurance

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a firmware-focused engineer to own C++ firmware across a distributed aircraft microcontroller system. You will collaborate with hardware and software teams to deliver observable, reliable software for deployed aircraft in a hybrid in-office/remote setting.

The role emphasizes real-time performance, robust interfaces, and tooling in Rust for simulations and testing. Constraints include memory, timing, and safety considerations for field deployments.

Qualifications

• Experience writing C++ for embedded or resource-constrained systems.
• Experience with embedded communications (Ethernet, serial, and similar).
• Strong background in real-time firmware design, scheduling, interrupts, and memory constraints.

Responsibilities

• Design and build C++ firmware for a distributed system of aircraft microcontrollers.
• Develop reliable Ethernet, serial, and other communication interfaces.
• Define platform-level interfaces and reusable firmware components.
• Ensure predictable performance of microcontroller systems and buses across startup to recovery.
• Optimize real-time behavior: CPU/memory utilization, latency, jitter, contention.
• Develop metrics, monitoring and troubleshooting for field deployment at scale.
• Develop Rust-based tooling and software-in-the-loop simulations to test firmware.

Skills

C++ firmware

Embedded systems

Real-time firmware

Ethernet/serial comms

Rust tooling

Job description

Zipline is seeking a firmware-focused engineer to own C++ firmware across a distributed aircraft microcontroller system. You will collaborate with hardware and software teams to deliver observable, reliable software for deployed aircraft in a hybrid in-office/remote setting.

The role emphasizes real-time performance, robust interfaces, and tooling in Rust for simulations and testing. Constraints include memory, timing, and safety considerations for field deployments.