Controls Engineer Intern (Spring 2027)
About The Position
Zipline is seeking a Controls Engineer Intern to join its Flight Controls team. The team develops, tests, and maintains flight software that enables autonomous aircraft to complete missions, from takeoff and delivery through safe, accurate landing. The work includes developing solutions that improve aircraft responsiveness, robustness, and quality across challenging operating conditions. The intern will learn how Zipline operates autonomous aircraft in varied flight conditions. Using flight-test, simulation, and fleet data, the intern will identify insights to improve system design and contribute changes that measurably improve the product. Interns may see their contributions fly. This is a full-time, in-person internship at Zipline’s South San Francisco or Dallas office. The Spring 2027 internship runs from January through April or May. The hourly rate is $40. Additional benefits may include relocation support, a housing stipend, overtime pay, paid sick time, and other benefits where applicable and subject to local requirements.
Requirements
- Strong applied mathematics skills.
- Interest in both simulations and working with hardware.
- Experience owning and developing controls solutions for a team project, thesis, or competition.
- Software engineering skills, preferably including embedded software such as C, C++, or Rust, and technical computing such as MATLAB, Python, or Julia.
Nice To Haves
- Exposure to one or more of the following: precision integrated inertial navigation, dynamic modeling of complex systems, linear control analysis, or optimal control with uncertainty.
- Experience with GitHub and working in a multi-developer environment.
Responsibilities
- Contribute to the design, implementation, testing, and release of flight algorithms that improve vehicle-controller operational performance.
- Create tools and tests to demonstrate design performance and protect against software regressions, using theoretical guarantees and simulations.
- Develop and improve simulation and controls-analysis tools to predict vehicle performance and demonstrate safety and reliability.
- Analyze flight data to assess changes and upgrades, identify regressions, and find potential areas for improvement.
- Design onboard integrity tests that communicate when system performance is degraded.
- Present key results and changes to the broader engineering team.
Benefits
- Additional benefits may include relocation support, a housing stipend, overtime pay, and paid sick time, where applicable and subject to local requirements.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Intern
Education Level
No Education Listed
