Zip Motion Planning Intern (Summer 2027)

Location: South San Francisco, California, USA Department: 2027 Internships

About Zipline

Zipline 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.

Our 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.

Our 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.

We 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.

About the Motion Planning Team

The Motion Planning team is central to Zipline’s autonomous delivery service.  In the coming year, we will be hyper-scaling from thousands to tens of thousands of carefully coordinated drone deliveries in several dense, dynamic U.S. metros. Our team is responsible for the decision-making and trajectory generation that enables accurate and timely delivery in all sorts of environments. We push the envelope for performance, range, robustness, reliability, safety, and scale.

The Role

Our distinctive challenges require that we understand the ins and outs of our performance. We can’t achieve our ambitious goals for safety and scale without perfecting our designs and pushing what is possible. We need you to help us gather data, measure our system, analyze performance, drive the next generation of algorithmic designs, and prioritize the development that produces the highest impact. You’ll work directly with our team in a fast-paced and collaborative environment, and interact daily with flight testing ops and data from our fleet. Join us, and be at the frontier of shaping the future of autonomous deliveries.

What You'll Do

Develop and evaluate motion planning algorithms for autonomous aircraft, exploring approaches such as search, sampling, and optimization.

Build simulation and analysis tools to compare planner behavior and investigate challenging scenarios.

Use simulation and flight data to identify long-tail issues, validate safety metrics, and guide improvements.

Transition experimental solutions to scalable, real-world applications.

Collaborate closely with team members, brainstorming and deriving creative solutions from first principles.

Share findings and insights, fostering knowledge exchange across teams

What You'll Bring

Working toward a BS, MS, or PhD in engineering, computer science, or robotics.

Experience with C++ or Rust

Familiarity with planning and search algorithms or trajectory optimization

Familiarity solving problems involving real-world physics and dynamics

Solid engineering intuition for keeping things simple and solving the right problems

What Else You Should Know

Our internships are full-time positions, in-person at our South San Francisco office. We will host our Summer 2027 interns from May/June to August/September

Candidates are limited to three (3) applications within a 30-day period.

The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, and working location. The total compensation package for each role may also include: a housing stipend; overtime pay; relocation support; paid sick time; and more.

Zipline 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.

We 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!

Zipline 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.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For 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.

As 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.