Staff Motion Planning Software Engineer
ziplineMillbrae (CA)
Staff Motion Planning Software Engineer
Posted today
ziplineMillbrae (CA)
SENIORITY
Lead
About the role
Overview:
As a Staff Software Engineer on Zipline's Autonomy Motion Planning team, you will shape real-time decision making for autonomous flight. You will balance safety, energy, time, and reliability to enable rapid, reliable deliveries at scale. You’ll work on planning under uncertainty, safety-critical interfaces, and extending the autonomy stack across aircraft and payloads. This role offers impact across product architecture and hands-on validation through simulation and field flight. Join a mission-driven team building a globally scalable autonomous logistics system that saves lives and reduces emissions. Compensation / Benefits equity compensation discretionary annual/ performance bonuses medical, dental and vision insurance paid time off competitive cash compensation flexible work arrangements
Responsibilities:
Build real-time trajectory generation and decision-making for autonomous flight (search-based, sampling, MPC, convex/non-convex optimization) Tackle joint optimization across safety, energy, time, and reliability to meet mission goals within vehicle constraints Plan in uncertain environments with complex dynamics and partial observability Design safety-critical software for obstacle avoidance and human interfaces during delivery and pickup Extend the autonomy stack for new aircraft and payloads with clean interfaces to perception and controls Prove correctness and feasibility via large-scale simulation, SIL/HIL, log replay, and fault-injection Mine fleet data to validate safety metrics, improve models, and address long-tail failure modes
Key requirements:
Master's degree in Computer Science or related field and 7+ years in safety-critical software (aerospace/AV/robotics) Strong programming in Rust/C++/C for real-time, fault-tolerant code on embedded/Linux Depth in planning & search (A*/RRT*/sampling) and trajectory optimization/MPC with real robots Hands-on experience with large-scale simulation, SIL/HIL, log replay, metrics-driven validation Proven track record shipping autonomous software in ambiguous, noisy conditions with high reliability Systems-thinking and collaboration with perception, controls, and flight ops; clear documentation systems thinking clear communication cross-functional collaboration Rust C++ C
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