Flight Test Engineer Intern (Summer 2026)
About The Position
About Zipline Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building the first instant logistics system that serves all humans equally. Leveraging expertise in robotics and autonomy, Zipline designs, builds, and operates a fleet of cutting edge, autonomous delivery drones. We serve tens of millions of people around the world. Joining Zipline’s Emerging Talent program as an intern is an opportunity to contribute to our promise of building a system that provides equitable access to critical healthcare supplies for millions of people. We believe that internships are more than just opportunities to learn by watching or doing low level tasks. We expect our interns to take on meaningful work that actively contributes to moving Zipline’s mission forward, while learning real-world skills that will serve them in their careers for the long term. Join us, and build the future of logistics with the best humans around! About the Flight Test Engineering Team Zipline’s Flight Test Engineering team is a specialized group that designs flight test courses and methods to support our overall system validation progress. This involves developing custom flight control software for complex maneuvers and collaborating with development engineers to design rigorous tests for all critical edge cases. We leverage expertise in system design, statistics, flight physics, and sound experimental methods to ensure our flight tests are effective and safe. The team partners closely with Controls and Dynamics, Embedded Software, Autonomy, Systems Engineering, Powertrain, Structure, and Flight Operations teams to build comprehensive test plans and test cards. Our work spans simulation, hardware testing, data-driven analysis, and system-level evaluations that support deployments across the globe. As an intern, you’ll collaborate with engineers across these domains, gaining hands-on exposure to how industry-leading autonomous systems are designed, tested, and validated at scale. The Role As a Flight Test Engineering Intern, you will be instrumental in analyzing flight test data logs to determine test effectiveness, identify success/failure root causes, and track performance trends. You will also directly contribute to the design of new flight test campaigns, collaborating with other engineers to define the test scope, test method, and data post-processing. This is a unique opportunity for someone excited to learn how complex robotic systems are validated, who enjoys problem-solving, and who wants to build real-world experience working with autonomy software, data analysis, and systems engineering
Requirements
- Strong mathematical and physics background
- Study in physics, mathematics, mechanical, aerospace, system engineering, computer science and electrical engineering or related fields.
- Experience in autonomous vehicle/ robotic system integration and testing work.
- Experience in data process, visualization
- Strong written and verbal communication skill
Responsibilities
- Analyze flight test data logs using custom scripts (Python, DataBricks, SQL) to identify anomalies, assess reliability, track performance trends, and perform regression analyses.
- Design, oversee the execution, and review the results of software validation and flight test campaigns to ensure new features perform as intended and prevent hardware/software regression.
- Daily test and monitor the develop branch to quickly surface instability and potential future issues.
- Collaborate with cross-functional partners (GNC, Aerodynamics, Structures, Systems Engineering) to ensure system-level requirements (e.g., acceleration, range, climb rate) are clear, measurable, and that vehicle changes are mature for flight testing.
- Define or develop novel test infrastructure, including new instrumentation systems (e.g., load cells, vision systems) or modified flight control software, to collect auxiliary data in flight.
- Establish and maintain documentation, dashboards, and SQL search queries to track test progress and operational efficiency.
- Be ready to directly own any aspect of flight operations (preflight, launch, flight maneuvers, incident reporting) or supervise these activities with the flight operations team.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Intern
Education Level
No Education Listed
Number of Employees
1,001-5,000 employees
