Motor Control Firmware Intern (Summer 2026)

About Zipline

Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building the first instant logistics system that serves all humans equally. Leveraging expertise in robotics and autonomy, Zipline designs, builds, and operates a fleet of cutting edge, autonomous delivery drones. We serve tens of millions of people around the world.

Joining Zipline’s Emerging Talent program as an intern is an opportunity to contribute to our promise of building a system that provides equitable access to critical healthcare supplies for millions of people. We believe that internships are more than just opportunities to learn by watching or doing low level tasks. We expect our interns to take on meaningful work that actively contributes to moving Zipline’s mission forward, while learning real-world skills that will serve them in their careers for the long term. 

Join us, and build the future of logistics with the best humans around!

About the Motor Control Firmware Team 

Our team owns the safety critical high performance firmware that runs on all our proprietary motor controllers to spin our in house motors. This includes our aircraft’s and droid’s propulsion motors, our winch, and all our servos. Our work focuses on the design, analysis, and testing of algorithms relating to estimation, control, or other operational requirements of the motor controllers. We work very closely with the electrical and mechanical engineers that own the physical PCBAs and motor assemblies as well as the controls engineers in charge of vehicle level controls. 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 optimize heat dissipation.
• Implementing propeller imbalance checks during preflight.

The Role

As an intern on the motor control team, you will be expected to own the resolution of some of the urgent late breaking requests made to our team. These are often safety critical tasks that mitigate newly discovered deficiencies in hardware or processes and have a measurable impact on the reliability of our aircraft. On top of driving these late breaking requests, you will also be the owner of a larger internship long project. This will not be a deep controls or estimation project but will be critical to the motor controllers functioning in a reliable, safe, or predictable way.

What You'll Do

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.

Some examples of relevant internship long projects you might be tasked with are:

• Propeller break detection.
• Slew rate limiting around 0 torque crossings in order to extend hardware lifetimes.
• Latching critical alarms in non volatile memory so that motors that were once determined to be unhealthy cannot be accidentally returned to flight.

Some examples of relevant day to day late breaking requests you might own are:

• Motor temperature based instruction to return the aircraft to dock immediately.
• Clockwise vs counterclockwise serial number based alarm to ensure aircraft with hover motors installed in the wrong spot block takeoff.
• Orienting hover propellers to their safest possible orientation in case of a paraland.

You will be expected to see your solutions all the way through design, simulation, bench testing, flight testing, and fleet level analysis, as needed.

What You'll Bring

You are a person who:

• Is passionate about learning about motor control firmware, Zipline’s aircraft and systems, and our mission.
• Has prior internship or design team experience.
• Is fluent in writing C or C++.
• Has a good understanding of physics fundamentals.

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.