{"id":3463121,"url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027","title":"Controls Engineer Intern (Spring 2027)","company":{"id":15878,"name":"Zipline","domain":"zipline.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/zipline","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":15,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":58,"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"}},"role":"Robotics","role_family":"Robotics","seniority":"intern","employment_type":"internship","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["South San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub","optional":false},{"name":"Inertial Navigation","optional":false},{"name":"MATLAB","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-19T16:19:41Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-19","last_verified_at":"2026-11-01T22:27:44Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":74,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":74},"description":"About Zipline\nZipline 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. \nOur 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.\nOur 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.\nWe 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.\nAbout the Flight Controls Team\nOur Flight Controls team is at the heart of Zipline’s product success - we are responsible for developing, testing and maintaining some of the critical flight software systems that enable our aircraft to complete missions autonomously, from takeoff through to predicting and executing a successful delivery, through to landing safely and accurately. We develop novel solutions to give us the responsiveness, robustness and quality we need to ensure our delivery platforms can function in a wide range of increasingly challenging conditions and truly serve everyone in the world equally.\nThe Role\nZipline’s people thrive on finding elegant solutions to complex problems, given what exists today and what we can develop to maturity quickly and confidently. We stay close to our customers, learn what really works, and find where we can put the leverage to make a big difference for them now. \nAs an intern on the Flight Controls team, you will learn how we fly autonomous aircraft in a range of challenging flight conditions. Using data from flight testing and simulation as well as our global fleet of customer aircraft, you will be looking for insights that can help improve our design. Through this you’ll have the opportunity to make changes to our systems that will measurably improve our product - your work will not just be theoretical; you will have the opportunity to see your contributions fly!\nWhat You'll Do\nContribute to the design, implementation, testing and release of innovative flight algorithms that improve the operational performance of our vehicle controllers\nCreate tools and tests to demonstrate your design performance and protect against software regressions, using both theoretical guarantees and simulations\nDevelop and improve simulation and other controls analysis tools so we can predict vehicle performance ahead of time and prove safety and reliability\nAnalyze flight data to assess recent changes and upgrades, looking for regressions and potential areas for future improvement\nDesign onboard integrity tests to communicate when the system performance is degraded\nPresent key results and changes to the broader engineering team\nWhat You'll Bring\nYour applied math skills stand out even among aerospace engineers.\nYou think simulations and working with hardware are both fun.\nYou have owned and developed controls solutions for a team project, thesis, or competition\nExposure 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.\nSoftware 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.\nWhat Else You Should Know\nOur internships are full-time positions, in-person at our South San Francisco or Dallas office. We will host our Spring 2027 interns from January - April/May. \nCandidates are limited to three (3) applications within a 30-day period.\nThe hourly rate for this internship is $40 per hour. Additional benefits may include relocation support, a housing stipend, overtime pay, paid sick time, and other benefits, where applicable and subject to local requirementsZipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.\nWe 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!\nZipline is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your point of contact at Zipline know if you require any accommodations throughout your interview process.\nVoluntary Self-Identification\nFor government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.\nAs set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6224,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Drones & UAVs","Delivery","Logistics"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-29T14:36:18Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 63 · green card filings: 13","filings_12m":63,"filings_prev_12m":47,"green_card_filings_12m":13,"median_offered_wage_usd":170658,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":28}],"liveness":{"score":22,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.495,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":73,"expected_fill_days":58,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:junior,brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-01T22:48:39Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":34687,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-02T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":15878},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=15878"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fzipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fzipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fzipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/zipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fzipline-controls-engineer-intern-spring-2027"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3463121}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"zipline.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3463121},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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