Controls Engineer Intern (Spring 2027)

As an intern on the Flight Controls team at Zipline, you will learn how we fly autonomous aircraft in challenging flight conditions. Using data from flight testing, simulation, and our global fleet, you will look for insights to improve our design and make changes that measurably improve our product. You will contribute to the design, implementation, testing, and release of innovative flight algorithms, create tools and tests, develop simulation and controls analysis tools, analyze flight data, design onboard integrity tests, and present key results to the engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the design, implementation, testing and release of innovative flight algorithms that improve the operational performance of our vehicle controllers
• Create tools and tests to demonstrate your design performance and protect against software regressions, using both theoretical guarantees and simulations
• Develop and improve simulation and other controls analysis tools so we can predict vehicle performance ahead of time and prove safety and reliability
• Analyze flight data to assess recent changes and upgrades, looking for regressions and potential areas for future improvement
• Design onboard integrity tests to communicate when the system performance is degraded
• Present key results and changes to the broader engineering team

Requirements

• Your applied math skills stand out even among aerospace engineers.
• You think simulations and working with hardware are both fun.
• You have owned and developed controls solutions for a team project, thesis, or competition
• Exposure in one or more of the following areas: precision integrated inertial navigation, dynamic modeling of complex systems, linear control analysis, or optimal control with uncertainty.
• Software engineering skills, preferably with both embedded software (C, C++, Rust) and technical computing (MATLAB, python, Julia, etc.). Experience with Github and working in a multi-developer environment is an advantage.