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Zipline

Builds and runs autonomous drone delivery

Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer

Embedded EngineeringConfirmed live in the last 24 hours
Full-timeSouth San Francisco, CA, USA$160k - $250k

About the Job

Requirements

  • Strong software engineering skills and production experience writing C++ for embedded or resource-constrained systems.
  • Experience with embedded communications, such as Ethernet, serial interfaces, or other hardware communication protocols.
  • Experience designing and debugging real-time firmware, including task scheduling, interrupts, concurrency, synchronization, and memory constraints.
  • Experience building and maintaining real-world deployed embedded systems, and handling edge cases to ensure consistent safety, reliability, and high performance.
  • A systems mindset and intuition for debugging, with the ability to narrow down possible causes when something goes wrong.
  • Fluency in implementing peripheral drivers based on electrical schematics and datasheets, and debugging at this boundary to support prototype hardware evaluation.
  • Ability to work from the office regularly in a hybrid in-office and distributed work environment centered around South San Francisco, California.

Responsibilities

  • Design and build C++ firmware for a distributed system of aircraft microcontrollers.
  • Develop reliable Ethernet, serial, and other microcontroller communication interfaces.
  • Define platform-level interfaces and reusable firmware components that support multiple aircraft subsystems.
  • Own the predictable and reliable performance of microcontroller systems and their communication buses across startup, real-time operation, fault handling, and recovery.
  • Optimize real-time behavior, including CPU utilization, memory usage, scheduling latency, timing jitter, and resource contention.
  • Develop metrics, monitoring, and troubleshooting capabilities to prepare the system for field deployment at scale.
  • Develop Rust-based tooling and software-in-the-loop simulations to test and validate firmware behavior.

About the Company

Zipline

Builds and runs autonomous drone delivery

Zipline builds and operates autonomous drone delivery networks for retailers, restaurants and healthcare systems that need to move products without road traffic. Its electric aircraft carry food, prescriptions and other supplies from partner sites or distribution hubs to customers and health facilities. The company combines aircraft, charging equipment and delivery software with flight operations, so partners buy a logistics service rather than manage their own drones. Merchants use its ordering and tracking tools to reach customers, while governments and health systems contract for medical supply delivery. Zipline was founded in 2014 and has its headquarters in South San Francisco, California.

Company size
1,001-5,000
Company stage
Late Stage VC
Total funding
$3.6B
Headquarters
South San Francisco, CA
Founded
2014

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