Senior Software Systems Validation Engineer

Software Systems Validation Engineer

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.

Role Expectations

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

• Validate system requirements and contribute to the iteration of software requirements.
• Collaborate with systems engineers and software teams to define system-level validation strategies
• Design, implement, and execute test scenarios for Zipline's end-to-end autonomous drone delivery software stack from simulation to full system (flight) test.
• Lead software systems validation strategy, focused on system-level performance, reliability, and safety.
• Build software performance and safety monitors that operate reliably in real-time systems.
• Collaborate with test infrastructure and data platform teams to architect and build frameworks and tools that enable large-scale automated system validation.
• Debug complex validation failures spanning simulation, hardware, firmware, embedded software and application software.

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
• 3+ years of Software Development, Software Systems Engineering or Software Validation experience working with robotic systems, and deeper experience in at least 1 of the following: Perception, Motion Planning, Navigation, Control or Estimation & Dynamics.
• Experience developing nominal, adversarial, stress and edge case testing for robotics applications.
• Experience working with large data sets in production pipelines
• Experience root causing failures in complex, autonomous, robotic systems.
• Proficiency in scripting (python, sql) and programming languages for safety critical applications (MISRA C, Rust, C++).
• Bonus
  • Experience with risk assessment tools and techniques (STPA, HARA).
  • Experience with standards DO-178C, ISO26262, ISO 21448, ARP 4761, ARP 4754.
  • Background in reliability engineering / statistical validation techniques.
  • Experience building software safety and software performance requirements from functional / technical requirements.

What Else You Need to Know

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!