Software Engineer - Systems Validation Infrastructure

About Zipline 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. ABOUT THE ROLE Zipline is looking for software engineers to build the tools and infrastructure that power our systems validation and flight test organizations. This team develops precise, efficient, and scalable software solutions used to validate aircraft and ground systems at every level. Our work spans everything from integrating real avionics, sensors, actuators, and radios with high-fidelity simulated environments in bench-top Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) setups, to building applications that plan, orchestrate, and evaluate thousands of automated nominal and off-nominal real-world flight tests every day. This role directly impacts the speed, confidence, and quality of hardware and software development at Zipline. In this role, you will develop a deep understanding of Zipline’s end-to-end logistics system and work closely with cross-functional partners who rely on your tools to deliver reliable, flight-ready software. Most importantly, the systems you build will serve as the final line of defense before software and hardware is deployed globally to perform critical, real-world deliveries. WHAT YOU’LL DO Design, develop, and maintain HIL test infrastructure that integrates real aircraft hardware with simulated systems and environments. Develop software tools, frameworks, and services to enable large-scale automated and semi-automated system validation. Support a high-throughput flight test organization running thousands of daily tests, from targeted regression tests to rare off-nominal scenarios. Write and maintain test software, drivers, and interfaces for embedded and Linux-based systems. Support test framework architecture designs and improvements. Debug complex validation failures spanning simulation, hardware, firmware, and application software Collaborate with flight test engineers, systems engineers, avionics, autonomy and embedded software teams to define system-level validation strategies. Improve test reliability, debuggability, and signal-to-noise as systems and test volume scale. WHAT YOU’LL BRING 4+ years of experience in software engineering for complex, hardware-backed, safety-critical systems. Extensive experience in Python, specifically using test systems (e.g. pytest) Experience testing Rust and/or C embedded systems. Extensive experience working with CI/CD. Experience developing and executing test plans for complex, safety critical, embedded and clou