Staff Embedded Firmware Engineer

The role

You will own C++ firmware and supporting tools for aircraft microcontrollers and embedded Linux computers. You will work with electrical, mechanical, embedded Linux, and systems engineers to turn hardware behavior and flight data into reliable software.

What you will do

• Design and build C++ firmware for a distributed system of aircraft microcontrollers.
• Develop reliable Ethernet, serial, and other microcontroller communication interfaces.
• Define platform-level interfaces and reusable firmware components.
• Own the predictable and reliable performance of microcontroller systems and communication buses.
• Optimize real-time behavior including CPU utilization, memory usage, scheduling latency, timing jitter, and resource contention.
• Develop metrics, monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities.
• Develop Rust-based tooling and software-in-the-loop simulations to test and validate firmware behavior.

Required qualifications

• Strong software engineering skills and production experience writing C++ for embedded or resource-constrained systems.
• Experience with embedded communications, such as Ethernet, serial interfaces, or other hardware communication protocols.
• Experience designing and debugging real-time firmware, including task scheduling, interrupts, concurrency, synchronization, and memory constraints.
• Experience building and maintaining real-world deployed embedded systems.
• A systems mindset and intuition for debugging.
• Fluency in implementing peripheral drivers based on electrical schematics and datasheets.

Benefits

• Equity compensation
• Discretionary annual or performance bonuses
• Sales incentives
• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Paid time off

About the company

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. They design, build, and operate an autonomous logistics system to deliver food, medicine, and essential goods.