About Zipline
Do you want to change the world Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the worlds most urgent and complex access challenges by building manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally wherever they are. From powering Rwandas national blood delivery network and Ghanas COVID-19 vaccine distribution to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes we are transforming the way things move for businesses governments and consumers.
The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy we are decarbonizing delivery decreasing road congestion and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.
Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.
About the Role
Zipline operates the worlds largest autonomous logistics system (ground or air) and in the coming year we will be hyper-scaling from thousands to tens of thousands of carefully coordinated drone deliveries in several dense dynamic U.S. metros. Our Autonomy Motion Planning team is looking for a Senior/Staff Software Engineer who is passionate about developing autonomous systems for the real world. This role will explore cutting-edge approaches to decision making and trajectory planning that will enable more accurate and timely deliveries putting you in the position to make critical product decisions that will shape our future architectures.
What Youll Do
Build real-time trajectory generation and decision-making for autonomous flight (search-based sampling MPC convex/non-convex optimization).
Design collision avoidance and large-scale multi-agent planning (fleet deconfliction airspace rules traffic management) that scales to 10000 flights/day.
Tackle joint optimization across safety energy time and reliabilitybalancing mission goals with vehicle/airspace constraints.
Plan in uncertain environments with complex dynamics: chance-constraints robustness to wind/turbulence degraded sensors and partial observability.
Extend the autonomy stack for new aircraft and payloads; define clean interfaces with perception and controls.
Prove it before flight: scenario libraries SIL/HIL large-scale sim log replay and fault-injection.
Mine real fleet data to validate safety metrics (separation risk intervention rate) improve models and burn down long-tail failure modes.
Continuously reduce cost/latency (vectorization warm starts smart heuristics) while raising reliability.
What Youll Bring
- Masters degree in Computer Science or related field and 3 years of experience building software for safety-critical systems (aerospace/AV/robotics/medical).
Strong in Rust/C/C for real-time fault-tolerant code on embedded/Linux.
Depth in planning & search (A*/ anytime / RRT*/sampling) trajectory optimization/MPC or multi-agent deconflictionshipped 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 conditionsowning the last mile to reliability.
Systems thinker who collaborates tightly with perception controls and flight ops; crisp docs and design reviews.
Why Join Now
Impact at scale: Your planner wont benchmark in isolationit will fly thousands of missions/day delivering essential goods.
Technical frontier: Real-time multi-agent autonomy joint optimization and robustness under uncertainty at a scale few have seen.
Ownership: High-leverage IC roleyour decisions shape Ziplines flight stack and the behavior of a global fleet.
Category leadership: Help define the standard for safe reliable autonomous flight in the real world.
What Else You Need to Know
The starting cash range for this role is $225000 - $280000; please note that this is a target starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. We are always open to negotiation. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors including a specific candidates experience qualifications skills working location and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.
Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard torace color ancestry national origin religion or religious creed mental or physical disability medical condition genetic information sex (including pregnancy childbirth and related medical conditions) sexual orientation gender identity gender expression age marital status military or veteran status citizenship or other characteristics protected by state federal or local law or our other policies.
We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit please apply!
Required Experience:
Staff IC
About ZiplineDo you want to change the world Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the worlds most urgent and complex access challenges by building manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally wherev...
About Zipline
Do you want to change the world Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the worlds most urgent and complex access challenges by building manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally wherever they are. From powering Rwandas national blood delivery network and Ghanas COVID-19 vaccine distribution to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes we are transforming the way things move for businesses governments and consumers.
The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy we are decarbonizing delivery decreasing road congestion and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.
Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.
About the Role
Zipline operates the worlds largest autonomous logistics system (ground or air) and in the coming year we will be hyper-scaling from thousands to tens of thousands of carefully coordinated drone deliveries in several dense dynamic U.S. metros. Our Autonomy Motion Planning team is looking for a Senior/Staff Software Engineer who is passionate about developing autonomous systems for the real world. This role will explore cutting-edge approaches to decision making and trajectory planning that will enable more accurate and timely deliveries putting you in the position to make critical product decisions that will shape our future architectures.
What Youll Do
Build real-time trajectory generation and decision-making for autonomous flight (search-based sampling MPC convex/non-convex optimization).
Design collision avoidance and large-scale multi-agent planning (fleet deconfliction airspace rules traffic management) that scales to 10000 flights/day.
Tackle joint optimization across safety energy time and reliabilitybalancing mission goals with vehicle/airspace constraints.
Plan in uncertain environments with complex dynamics: chance-constraints robustness to wind/turbulence degraded sensors and partial observability.
Extend the autonomy stack for new aircraft and payloads; define clean interfaces with perception and controls.
Prove it before flight: scenario libraries SIL/HIL large-scale sim log replay and fault-injection.
Mine real fleet data to validate safety metrics (separation risk intervention rate) improve models and burn down long-tail failure modes.
Continuously reduce cost/latency (vectorization warm starts smart heuristics) while raising reliability.
What Youll Bring
- Masters degree in Computer Science or related field and 3 years of experience building software for safety-critical systems (aerospace/AV/robotics/medical).
Strong in Rust/C/C for real-time fault-tolerant code on embedded/Linux.
Depth in planning & search (A*/ anytime / RRT*/sampling) trajectory optimization/MPC or multi-agent deconflictionshipped 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 conditionsowning the last mile to reliability.
Systems thinker who collaborates tightly with perception controls and flight ops; crisp docs and design reviews.
Why Join Now
Impact at scale: Your planner wont benchmark in isolationit will fly thousands of missions/day delivering essential goods.
Technical frontier: Real-time multi-agent autonomy joint optimization and robustness under uncertainty at a scale few have seen.
Ownership: High-leverage IC roleyour decisions shape Ziplines flight stack and the behavior of a global fleet.
Category leadership: Help define the standard for safe reliable autonomous flight in the real world.
What Else You Need to Know
The starting cash range for this role is $225000 - $280000; please note that this is a target starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. We are always open to negotiation. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors including a specific candidates experience qualifications skills working location and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.
Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard torace color ancestry national origin religion or religious creed mental or physical disability medical condition genetic information sex (including pregnancy childbirth and related medical conditions) sexual orientation gender identity gender expression age marital status military or veteran status citizenship or other characteristics protected by state federal or local law or our other policies.
We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit please apply!
Required Experience:
Staff IC
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Not Disclosed
Posted on:
15 hours ago
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
