Senior Simulation Software Engineer

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

3h•$180,000 - $225,000

About The Position

Zipline is scaling the world's largest autonomous drone delivery network—a pioneering Physical AI system—delivering life-saving medical supplies and commercial goods globally. Our commitment to safety and exponential scale demands an industrial-grade virtual test environment, decoupled from physical hardware. That’s the mission of our Simulation team. We are seeking a Simulation Software Engineer to build and evolve the core infrastructure that validates our entire robotics fleet software. This is not a standard simulation role; it is deep, systems-level software engineering focused on creating high-performance, high-fidelity digital twins that enable deterministic, faster-than-realtime testing of all autonomous safety-critical flight logic, cloud connectivity, and vehicle coordination across thousands of mission scenarios. This role is absolutely critical for the safety and reliability of Zipline's real-world Physical AI deployment. If you are driven by the challenge of integrating complex flight software with synthetic environments, real hardware, and advanced time-manipulation to rigorously test an autonomous system, we want to hear from you!

Requirements

4+ years of professional software engineering experience in C++ or Rust (Rust experience is a strong plus).
Deep experience architecting, building, or maintaining complex robotics, aerospace, or distributed systems simulations/digital twins.
Expertise in concepts like time synchronization, inter-process communication, and determinism within a systems-level or real-time context.
Applied knowledge of physical modeling and dynamics (mechanics and motion) to support high-fidelity system modeling.
A passion for building enabling infrastructure and tools that allow Zipline engineers to simulate faster, test earlier, and deploy safer.

Nice To Haves

Experience scaling simulation in CI, HIL (Hardware-in-the-Loop), or formal verification methods.
Experience with visual autonomy systems for navigation or DAA.

Responsibilities

Robotics Infrastructure Framework: Own the universal simulation test automation framework utilized by teams across the organization, including Autonomy, Embedded Systems, Cloud, Ground Software, and Test Engineering, making you a company-wide enabler for rapid iteration.
Deterministic Core Systems: Architect the core synchronization and control system that drives the simulation's time flow, input generation, and complex scenario orchestration, allowing rigorous validation of full-stack autonomy and emergency workflows.
Fleet Digital Twins & Virtual Test Environment: Develop a robust, scalable environment for testing real-world failure modes, complex multi-robot fleet behaviors, and system edge cases at scale, eliminating reliance on physical aircraft or hardware for regression testing.
Synthetic Data Generation: Lead the integration of advanced image sensor and visual autonomy simulation capabilities for verification of closed-loop perception and control software.
Service Integration Layer: Build and maintain integration layers that connect simulated vehicle components with fake cloud servers and ground station software, creating a true end-to-end system digital twin.
Performance & Scalability: Lead the transition of our in-house simulation system to Rust, a critical, high-impact initiative focused on dramatically improving speed, maintainability, and long-term scalability of our robotics development cycle.