Zipline
Staff Motion Planning Software Engineer
$230K–$270K
South San Francisco, California, USA +1 · Staff · Full-time · Posted Jul 28, 2026
- Location
- South San Francisco, California, USA
South San Francisco, California, United States - Experience
- 7+ years building software for safety-critical systems (aerospace/AV/robotics).
- Education
- Master's degree in Computer Science or related field.
About the job
Develops real-time motion planning and decision-making for autonomous aircraft, improving safe and reliable drone deliveries across real-world conditions.
What you'll do
- Build trajectory-generation and decision-making systems; optimize safety, energy, time, and reliability under vehicle constraints.
- Design safety-critical obstacle avoidance and human-interaction software, and extend autonomy interfaces for new aircraft and payloads.
- Validate autonomy with simulation, SIL/HIL, log replay, fleet data, safety metrics, and fault injection.
What they ask for
- Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
- Strong Rust, C++, or C skills for real-time, fault-tolerant embedded/Linux software.
- Depth in planning/search and trajectory optimization/MPC, shipped on real robots or vehicles.
- Hands-on experience with simulation at scale, SIL/HIL, log replay, and metrics-driven validation.
Pay
$230,000 - $270,000 USD base salary (starting cash range)
Tools
Rust, C++, C, A*, RRT*, MPC, SIL/HIL, Linux
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative