Zipline · 3 days ago
Staff Motion Planning Software Engineer
South San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$225K/yr - $280K/yr
3+ years expZipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move, providing innovative logistics solutions globally. The Staff Motion Planning Software Engineer will develop autonomous systems for real-time trajectory generation and decision-making, ensuring efficient and safe drone deliveries in complex environments.
DeliveryDronesElectric VehicleHome Health CareLogisticsRoboticsSupply Chain Management
Responsibilities
Build real-time trajectory generation and decision-making for autonomous flight (search-based, sampling, MPC, convex/non-convex optimization)
Design collision avoidance and large-scale multi-agent planning (fleet deconfliction, airspace rules, traffic management) that scales to 10,000+ flights/day
Tackle joint optimization across safety, energy, time, and reliability—balancing mission goals with vehicle/airspace constraints
Plan in uncertain environments with complex dynamics: chance-constraints, robustness to wind/turbulence, degraded sensors, and partial observability
Extend the autonomy stack for new aircraft and payloads; define clean interfaces with perception and controls
Prove it before flight: scenario libraries, SIL/HIL, large-scale sim, log replay, and fault-injection
Mine real fleet data to validate safety metrics (separation, risk, intervention rate), improve models, and burn down long-tail failure modes
Continuously reduce cost/latency (vectorization, warm starts, smart heuristics) while raising reliability
Qualification
Required
Master's degree in Computer Science or related field and 3+ years of experience building software for safety-critical systems (aerospace/AV/robotics/medical)
Strong in Rust/C++/C for real-time, fault-tolerant code on embedded/Linux
Depth in planning & search (A*/ anytime / RRT*/sampling), trajectory optimization/MPC, or multi-agent deconfliction—shipped on real robots/vehicles
Hands-on with simulation at scale, SIL/HIL, log replay, and metrics-driven validation
Evidence of shipping production-grade autonomy through ambiguous, noisy conditions—owning the last mile to reliability
Systems thinker who collaborates tightly with perception, controls, and flight ops; crisp docs and design reviews
Benefits
Equity compensation
Discretionary annual or performance bonuses
Sales incentives
Benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance
Paid time off
Company
Zipline
Zipline designs, manufactures, and operates drones to deliver vital medical products.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Zipline has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (54)
2024 (39)
2023 (29)
2022 (20)
2021 (16)
2020 (3)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$971MKey Investors
U.S. Department of StateThe Rise FundKatalyst Ventures
2025-11-25Grant· $150M
2023-04-28Series F· $330M
2021-06-30Series E· $250M
Leadership Team
Keller Rinaudo Cliffton
Co-founder & CEO
Keenan Wyrobek
Founder, CTO and Product Architect
Recent News
felicis.com
2025-12-26
Company data provided by crunchbase