Senior Software Systems Validation Engineer

Zipline • South San Francisco, CA

3h

About The Position

Zipline’s autonomous drone delivery system relies on software that behaves safely and predictably across sensor drivers, perception, navigation, guidance and control, motion planning, power management, actuator control and fleet autonomy. As a Senior Software Systems Validation Engineer, you will lead end-to-end evaluation from simulation through full-system flight testing. You will bridge Systems Engineering and Software Development, owning validation strategy and the evidence that exposes capability gains, gaps, regressions, and safety risks. Your work will inform engineering decisions for large-scale deployment and operating-domain expansion across aircraft performance, delivery operations, docking systems, and fleet orchestration.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field.
• 3+ years of software development, software systems engineering, or software validation experience with robotic systems.
• Strong experience in one or more relevant domains: embedded Linux, perception, motion planning, navigation, control, estimation, dynamics, connected systems, or power management.
• Experience developing nominal, adversarial, stress, and edge-case validation for autonomous robotics.
• Experience root-causing failures in complex autonomous systems and working with large datasets in production pipelines.
• Proficiency with Python and SQL, plus programming languages used in safety-critical applications such as MISRA C, Rust, or C++.
• Experience applying risk-assessment tools and techniques and deriving software safety or performance requirements from functional safety requirements or similar requirements decompositions.

Responsibilities

• Define system-level validation strategy for software performance, reliability, and safety.
• Design, implement, and execute nominal, adversarial, stress, and edge-case scenarios from simulation through full-system flight testing.
• Build metrics, visualizations, real-time performance and safety monitors, and automated tools that reveal capability changes and regressions.
• Set validation evidence and exit criteria that inform release, deployment, and operating-domain expansion decisions.
• Debug failures across simulation, hardware, firmware, embedded software, and application software; clearly document findings and escalate unresolved safety or performance risks.
• Partner with test infrastructure and data platform teams to increase automated validation coverage, efficiency, and precision while maintaining development and deployment velocity.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior