Senior or Staff Simulation Software Engineer

Company: Zipline
Location: South San Francisco
Posted on: April 2, 2026

Job Description:

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 You and the Role Zipline is scaling the world's largest autonomous drone delivery network—a pioneering Physical AI system—delivering life-saving medical supplies and commercial goods globally. Our commitment to safety and exponential scale demands an industrial-grade virtual test environment, decoupled from physical hardware. That’s the mission of our Simulation team. We are seeking a Simulation Software Engineer to build and evolve the core infrastructure that validates our entire robotics fleet software. This is not a standard simulation role; it is deep, systems-level software engineering focused on creating high-performance, high-fidelity digital twins that enable deterministic, faster-than-realtime testing of all autonomous safety-critical flight logic, cloud connectivity, and vehicle coordination across thousands of mission scenarios. This role is absolutely critical for the safety and reliability of Zipline's real-world Physical AI deployment. If you are driven by the challenge of integrating complex flight software with synthetic environments, real hardware, and advanced time-manipulation to rigorously test an autonomous system, we want to hear from you! What You'll Own Robotics Infrastructure Framework: Own the universal simulation test automation framework utilized by teams across the organization, including Autonomy, Embedded Systems, Cloud, Ground Software, and Test Engineering, making you a company-wide enabler for rapid iteration. Deterministic Core Systems: Architect the core synchronization and control system that drives the simulation's time flow, input generation, and complex scenario orchestration, allowing rigorous validation of full-stack autonomy and emergency workflows. Fleet Digital Twins & Virtual Test Environment: Develop a robust, scalable environment for testing real-world failure modes, complex multi-robot fleet behaviors , and system edge cases at scale, eliminating reliance on physical aircraft or hardware for regression testing. Synthetic Data Generation: Lead the integration of advanced image sensor and visual autonomy simulation capabilities for verification of closed-loop perception and control software. Service Integration Layer: Build and maintain integration layers that connect simulated vehicle components with fake cloud servers and ground station software, creating a true end-to-end system digital twin. Performance & Scalability: Lead the transition of our in-house simulation system to Rust , a critical, high-impact initiative focused on dramatically improving speed, maintainability, and long-term scalability of our robotics development cycle . Why This Role is Cross-Cutting This is not a niche role within Autonomy—it’s a company-wide enabler . The Flight Software team uses simulation to validate onboard mission logic. The Test team uses it to explore pre-flight conditions and troubleshoot real-world anomalies. The Cloud team uses it to model server interactions like map updates, delivery instructions, and real-time comms. Full system Hardware-In-The-Loop testing framework uses simulation for flight software validation The Embedded and Ground teams use it to validate system integration, safety cases, and operational resilience. And the CI/CD pipeline relies on simulation to catch regressions before they ever reach a flight zone. If your passion lies in building infrastructure that unlocks fast, safe iteration across multiple engineering domains , this role is built for you. What You'll Bring 4 years of professional software engineering experience in C++ or Rust (Rust experience is a strong plus). Deep experience architecting, building, or maintaining complex robotics, aerospace, or distributed systems simulations/digital twins . Expertise in concepts like time synchronization, inter-process communication, and determinism within a systems-level or real-time context. Applied knowledge of physical modeling and dynamics (mechanics and motion) to support high-fidelity system modeling. A passion for building enabling infrastructure and tools that allow Zipline engineers to simulate faster, test earlier, and deploy safer . Bonus: Experience scaling simulation in CI, HIL (Hardware-in-the-Loop), or formal verification methods. Bonus : Experience with visual autonomy systems for navigation or DAA. What Else You Need to Know The starting cash range for this role is $180,000 - $265,000. 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; 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!

Keywords: Zipline, Elk Grove , Senior or Staff Simulation Software Engineer, Engineering , South San Francisco, California