Staff Embedded Firmware Engineer - Real-Time Drone Systems

Candidate; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Discretionary bonuses

Medical, dental & vision insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Zipline, a leader in autonomous logistics, seeks engineers to own C++ firmware for a distributed aircraft system. You will work with embedded Linux, microcontrollers, and hardware drivers, turning flight data into reliable software for deployed aircraft.

The role combines in-office work at the South San Francisco headquarters with distributed collaboration, offering equity, bonuses, and comprehensive benefits in a fast-growing environment.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering skills in C++ for embedded/resource-constrained systems.
• Experience with embedded communications (Ethernet, serial).
• Real-time firmware design including scheduling, interrupts, memory constraints.

Responsibilities

• Design and build C++ firmware for aircraft microcontrollers.
• Develop reliable Ethernet, serial, and other interfaces.
• Define platform interfaces and reusable firmware components for subsystems.
• Ensure predictable performance of microcontroller systems and buses.
• Optimize real-time behavior: CPU, memory, scheduling latency, jitter.
• Develop metrics, monitoring and troubleshooting for field deployment.
• Develop Rust tooling and software-in-the-loop simulations to test firmware.

Skills

C++ firmware

Embedded systems

Real-time firmware

Embedded Linux

Debugging

Tools

Rust tooling

Simulations (software-in-the-loop)

Job description

Zipline, a leader in autonomous logistics, seeks engineers to own C++ firmware for a distributed aircraft system. You will work with embedded Linux, microcontrollers, and hardware drivers, turning flight data into reliable software for deployed aircraft.

The role combines in-office work at the South San Francisco headquarters with distributed collaboration, offering equity, bonuses, and comprehensive benefits in a fast-growing environment.