is Hiring Firmware Engineer Intern

About Zipline

Zipline is the world's largest and most experienced drone delivery service. The company's mission is to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. Zipline designs, builds, and operates the world's largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably.

Today, Zipline operates on four continents and makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds. It has completed millions of deliveries, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products.

Customers include major healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.

About the Firmware Team

The firmware team owns the embedded firmware on all of Zipline's microcontroller systems on its aircraft and delivery system. The team's scope runs from the application layer down to the platform beneath it, including bootloaders, RTOS integration, serial and ethernet communication, battery management, and motor control.

The Role

Zipline aircraft depend on embedded firmware to execute critical flight and safety functions across a network of microcontrollers and embedded Linux computers. This software must perform reliably as aircraft move from manufacturing into delivery operations at field sites worldwide, including locations that are hard to reach over a network.

You will own C++ firmware and supporting tools that are critical to the safety and operation of these systems, and help make the system more observable and easier to diagnose at scale. Working alongside electrical, mechanical, embedded Linux, and systems engineers, you will turn hardware behavior and flight data into reliable, maintainable software for deployed aircraft.

What You'll Do

• Design and build C++ firmware for a distributed system of aircraft microcontrollers.
• Develop reliable Ethernet, serial, and other microcontroller communication interfaces.
• Define platform-level interfaces and reusable firmware components that support multiple aircraft subsystems.
• Own the predictable and reliable performance of the microcontroller systems and the communication buses that connect them, across startup, real-time operation, fault handling, and recovery.
• Optimize real-time behavior, including CPU utilization, memory usage, scheduling latency, timing jitter, and resource contention.
• Develop metrics, monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities to prepare the system for field deployment at scale.
• Develop Rust-based tooling and software-in-the-loop simulations to test and validate firmware behavior.

What You'll Bring

You are a person who:

• Is passionate about learning firmware, real-time systems, Zipline's aircraft and systems, and the company's mission.
• Has prior internship or design team experience.
• Has experience writing C or C++.
• Has excellent grades in embedded systems classes.

This internship is expected to be onsite in South San Francisco 5 days per week. Rising seniors are preferred.

What Else You Should Know

Internships are full-time, in-person positions in South San Francisco. Zipline will host Spring 2027 interns from January to April/May.

Candidates are limited to three (3) applications within a 30-day period.

The final cash pay depends on factors including the candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, and working location. The total compensation package may also include a housing stipend, overtime pay, relocation support, paid sick time, and more.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. We value diversity and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you are unsure whether you are the perfect fit, please apply.

Zipline is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your point of contact know if you require any accommodations during the interview process.