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Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.

About You and The Role

The Powertrain team is a multi-disciplinary hardware and software team responsible for designing the electric drivetrain at the heart of our life-saving drone delivery service, operating in some of the harshest environments on earth.

We are looking for an experienced firmware engineer who has worked in high-performing hardware/software systems to develop flight-code for power electronics and battery systems. If you're a self-starter with a strong background in software development, microcontrollers and a passion for shipping code to the real world, we want to hear from you!

What You'll Do

• Develop software architectures and microcontroller firmware necessary for a fully functioning battery and power distribution subsystem on our flight vehicles.
• Develop low-level microcontroller drivers for production and prototype sensors, and refine sensor data APIs for use cases like energy management, battery health, and power distribution.
• Analyze the runtime characteristics of our software in flight to build confidence in its performance, focusing on re-usable, maintainable software and optimizing where required.
• Understand and improve the reliability of the battery and power subsystems as a whole, working with hardware and systems engineers to develop comprehensive fault management strategies and hardware-in-the-loop tests.
• Develop metrics, monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities to prepare the system for field deployment at scale.
• Design and build data collection and testing tools to support early stage evaluation of new energy systems.

What You'll Bring

• Strong software engineering skills, with proficiency in at least one strongly typed language. We use Rust, C++ and Python.
• Curiosity and a willingness to learn and work in a variety of software environments, from microcontrollers to hardware test frameworks to fleet-scale data analysis notebooks. We use FreeRTOS on our microcontrollers, and Linux as our primary development environment.
• An interest in becoming a domain expert in battery and energy subsystems. Previous experience with this domain is not required.
• Experience building and maintaining real-world deployed embedded systems, and handling the long tail of edge cases to ensure consistently high performance and reliability.
• A systems mindset and intuition for debugging; when anything could be wrong, you know how to narrow down the possibilities.
• A fluency in implementing peripheral drivers based on electrical schematics and datasheets, and debugging at this boundary in order to support prototype hardware evaluation.

Our team uses a hybrid in-office and distributed work environment, centered around our headquarters in South San Francisco, CA. You must be able to work from the office on a regular basis.

What Else You Need to Know