Motor Control Firmware Intern (Summer 2026)

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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 Motor Control Firmware Team

Our team writes the high performance firmware that runs on our motors, all of which are developed in-house. This includes our propulsion motors, our winch, and our servos. Our work focuses on the design, analysis, and testing of algorithms for estimation, control, diagnostics, and operation of the motor controllers. We work closely with the electrical and mechanical engineers that own the PCBAs and motor assemblies as well as the controls engineers in charge of vehicle dynamics. Projects we have worked on include:

• Emitting a siren sound from the hover motors in case of paraland.
• Designing a sensor-less estimator capable of maintaining motor state during 0 speed crossings.
• Implementing a max torque per amp control policy to minimize heat dissipation.
• Implementing propeller imbalance checks during preflight.

The Role

As an intern on the motor control team, you will write firmware that directly improves the delivery experience. The work will consist of both rapid changes in collaboration with cross-functional partners, as well as a long-running intern capstone project that will introduce a new capability to our motor systems. You will work side-by-side with the firmware and controls engineers on the team to unlock additional hardware capability, improve vehicle efficiency, expand system health observability, and improve the performance of our actuators and propulsion control systems.

What You'll Do

Growth Opportunities and New Skills:

• Bare metal firmware programming.
• Fleet-wide hardware performance analysis.
• Driver development for hard real time systems.
• Firmware performance profiling and optimization.

Typical intern projects include:

• Propeller break detection.
• Slew rate limiting around 0 torque crossings in order to extend hardware lifetimes.
• Latching critical alarms in non-volatile memory to improve traceability of transient failures.
• Thermal behavior to return the aircraft to dock immediately.
• Firmware features that enforce vehicle configuration prior to takeoff.
• Orienting hover propellers to their safest possible orientation during a paraland.

You will see your solutions all the way through design, simulation, bench testing, flight testing, and fleet level analysis. Rigorous work is expected but the team will guide you through this process.

Although we will not expect you to own deep controls or estimation outcomes, there will be ample opportunity to learn all about our control stack, the differential equations that guide our motors’ operation, and other topics in motor physics.

What You'll Bring

You are a person who:

• Is passionate about learning about motor firmware, Zipline’s aircraft and systems, and our mission.
• Has prior internship or design team experience.
• Has experience with writing C or C++.
• Has excellent grades in mechanics and electromagnetics classes.

It is expected that you will be onsite in South San Francisco 5 days / week for this internship. Rising seniors are preferred.

What Else You Should Know

Our internships are full-time positions, in-person at our South San Francisco or Dallas office. We will host our Summer 2026 interns from May or June to August.

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

The starting cash range for this internship is $38 - 42/ hour. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. 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.