Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer

Responsibilities

• Own one or more long-range platform embedded subsystems from design and implementation through production readiness.
• Develop and maintain flight- and safety-critical firmware, drivers, real-time control interfaces, fault management, and graceful degradation logic on microcontrollers.
• Define and deliver measurable reliability and observability outcomes, including mission success, in-field fault rates, test coverage, and MTTR improvements.
• Lead hardware-in-the-loop, bench, and field validation, including repeatable test plans and failure-insertion exercises.
• Build tooling for deterministic testing, logging, post-flight analysis, and automated regression testing.
• Triage high-severity field incidents, drive root-cause analysis, implement fixes, and verify resolution through fleet metrics.
• Collaborate with avionics, systems engineering, manufacturing, test engineering, and flight operations on integration boundaries, certification inputs, and release criteria.

Requirements

• Substantial experience shipping production embedded code in C++ or Rust, with strong Python skills for test and telemetry tooling.
• Experience with bare-metal and RTOS environments and with fault management, deterministic real-time requirements, and validation strategies.
• Proven experience deploying and operating embedded software in safety- or mission-critical systems such as aviation, robotics, or industrial controls.
• Ability to read schematics, bring up peripherals from datasheets, and debug hardware/software interactions using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, JTAG, and in-field telemetry.
• Experience owning subsystem delivery end to end, shipping repeatable test suites, and meeting quantified reliability targets.
• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or computer science, or equivalent experience.
• Typically 5+ years of experience in embedded or flight-critical systems, or equivalent demonstrated impact.
• Embedded Linux experience is nice to have.
• Willingness to support field testing, travel occasionally to flight-test sites, and participate in critical incident response outside standard hours.

Benefits

• Starting cash range of $125,000-$210,000, with potential equity compensation and discretionary annual or performance bonuses.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance and paid time off are available.
• Based at Zipline’s South San Francisco headquarters, with occasional travel to flight-test sites and an intensive field-testing and incident-response cadence.