Embedded Software Engineer Intern (Spring 2027)

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

7d•$54•Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date. Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds. The Embedded Team at Zipline is critical to exceeding the capabilities of off-the-shelf solutions, engineering the majority of our system in-house. Writing embedded applications and drivers close to the hardware is a critical path to delivering to people whose lives will be meaningfully affected by smarter, more equitable access. Interns will have the opportunity to dive deep into technical ownership, defining system requirements, developing creative solutions, and proving them with testing and data. The team is constantly learning to improve systems and themselves. Current challenges include designing and developing a software platform for new delivery systems, scaling flight and distribution center software, prototyping and refining next-generation flight and ground systems, developing safe software architecture, developing perception solutions for all weather conditions, and achieving safety and reliability goals beyond the current state of the art.

Requirements

Pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or Computer Engineering.
Must have at least completed the second year of Undergraduate studies. Masters and PhD students are also eligible.
Have designed, built and/or deployed electromechanical systems or robots, inside or outside the classroom.
Comfortable working in one of C, C++, Python, or Rust.
Have developed software for a real time operating system or embedded Linux.
Comfortable receiving feedback so that you can learn to write code that is efficient, easy-to-read, well-tested, has friendly APIs, and incurs minimal technical debt.
Familiar with basic electrical engineering concepts, such as reading schematics, debugging with an oscilloscope, and communication protocols (CAN, SPI, UART, etc).

Responsibilities

Design and develop a software platform for the new P2 Zip and the world’s cutest Droid delivery and dock system
Scale our flight and distribution center software to allow upwards exponentially more deliveries per day
Prototype, test, and refine next generation flight and ground systems working alongside our mechanical and electrical engineering teams
Develop safe software architecture that will be deployed across the world
Develop perception solutions for any weather and any real world environment
Achieve safety and reliability goals beyond the current state of the art
Work alongside cross-functional partners to develop solutions to some of our trickiest problems.
Deploy embedded software to devices across the world.
Handle fault response and handling.
Work on launching & landing systems.
Integrate with customer’s physical & software systems.
Build an RF radio test setup to validate antenna performance of the flight compute at the production end-of-line.
Develop firmware for a real-time coprocessor that manages high-frequency signals and I/O expansion for the Linux camera subsystem.
Build a high data rate voltage and current telemetry system that runs continuously in our RTOS using ADCs, I2C devices and GPIO interrupts.
Rapidly iterate on the concept of a new perception system, integrating compute modules and sensor prototypes to fly a proof of concept ASAP and de-risk key aspects of the approach.
Work with operations teams to identify ways to improve our ground systems behavior to enable faster aircraft launch and landing.
Prioritize changes by obtaining engineering leadership buy-in, and implementing them by using a variety of bench-top and real flight-test methods to verify the code.
Roll out updates to global operations.