Staff Embedded Firmware Engineer

Responsibilities

• Design and build C++ firmware for distributed aircraft microcontrollers.
• Develop Ethernet, serial, and other microcontroller communication interfaces.
• Define platform-level interfaces and reusable firmware components for multiple aircraft subsystems.
• Own reliable startup, real-time operation, fault handling, recovery, and communication-bus performance.
• Optimize CPU utilization, memory usage, scheduling latency, timing jitter, and resource contention.
• Develop metrics, monitoring, and troubleshooting capabilities for field deployment at scale.
• Develop Rust-based tooling and software-in-the-loop simulations to test and validate firmware behavior.
• Implement and debug peripheral drivers using electrical schematics and datasheets.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering skills and production experience writing C++ for embedded or resource-constrained systems.
• Experience with embedded communications, including Ethernet, serial interfaces, or other hardware communication protocols.
• Experience designing and debugging real-time firmware involving task scheduling, interrupts, concurrency, synchronization, and memory constraints.
• Experience building and maintaining deployed embedded systems and handling edge cases for safety, reliability, and performance.
• Systems-level debugging ability and intuition for narrowing down hardware and software failure possibilities.
• Fluency implementing peripheral drivers from electrical schematics and datasheets and debugging at the hardware-software boundary.
• Ability to work from Zipline’s South San Francisco office on a regular basis.

Benefits

• Hybrid in-office and distributed work environment centered around the South San Francisco headquarters.
• The role may include equity compensation, discretionary annual or performance bonuses, medical, dental and vision insurance, paid time off, and other benefits.