South San Francisco, California, USA
Role details
$150,000 – $180,000
Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are 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. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products.
Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations.
Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.
We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.
As a Software Systems Validation Engineer you will lead end-to-end software evaluation of Zipline’s autonomous drone delivery system. This system spans various domains, including sensor drivers, perception, navigation, guidance and control, motion planning, power management and actuator control.
As part of this evaluation, you will build tools, metrics and visualizations that highlight capability improvements, gaps, and regressions, and ultimately fast track engineering decision making for large scale deployments and operating domain expansion. Your scope may include aircraft performance, delivery operations, docking systems, and fleet orchestration.
You will evaluate and continuously improve validation practices, identifying areas where improvements to tools, methodologies, and processes can increase validation coverage, efficiency and precision while maintaining high development and deployment velocity. For this, you will collaborate closely with our embedded and autonomy software teams, systems engineering, data platform and test infrastructure teams, and ensure that our software behaviors function as intended in real-world scenarios.
You will, thus, be the bridge between Systems Engineering and Software Development at Zipline.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
WHAT YOU’LL BRING
The starting cash range for this role is $150,000 - 180,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; overtime pay; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.
Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.
We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!
Role context
This Software Systems Validation Engineer role at Zipline sits in the engineering track within defense and autonomy. The position is tied to South San Francisco, California, USA and is posted 2 days ago, which signals active hiring intent rather than archived demand. Compensation is disclosed as $150,000 – $180,000, which improves comparability for candidates reviewing similar listings. Combined with the live company and role links on this page, this listing gives candidates a direct path to compare equivalent openings by employer, market, and role focus.
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Location
South San Francisco, California, USA
Location
Approximate role location based on the employer listing.
South San Francisco, California, USA
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