Autonomy Platform Software Engineer at Zipline · South…

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 You and the Role

You’re a systems-minded SWE who lives at the boundary of autonomy, embedded Linux, and hardware. Reporting to the Head of Droid Autonomy, you’ll own the delivery runtime end to end. You’ll bring up compute and sensors on Jetson/Linux, design flight/runtime orchestration—mission state machines, behavior gating, safe-state transitions—and build observability (logging, health monitoring, replay) for fast, trustworthy post-flight validation.

You bring deep Linux expertise (kernel, userspace, performance tuning), experience shipping robotic applications to real customers, and strong software architecture chops in strongly-typed languages (Rust/C++; Python for tooling). You communicate clearly, make legible, auditable safety decisions, and bridge HW↔SW while leading cross-functional stakeholders to closure on complex trade-offs.

What You'll Do:

• Integrate and own Delivery Zip runtime software: Bring up, configure, and validate new compute and sensor hardware across our autonomy stack.
• Develop system-level observability: Build logging, health monitoring, and replay tooling for post-flight analysis and validation.
• Drive reliability of software: Autonomy subsystem requires a highly reliable platform to build solutions on.
• Develop and maintain embedded software: Write robust, low-latency Rust/C++ code on embedded Linux.
• Design flight/runtime orchestration logic: Build mission state machines, behavior gating, and safe-state transitions across compute nodes under real-time constraints.
• Validate safety and performance: Use SIL/HIL and real-flight telemetry to measure deterministic behavior and prove reliability before deployment.

What You'll Bring:

• 3+ years of experience in delivering robotic applications to real-world customers.
• Strong expertise in low level OS/linux/jetson
• Strong software engineering skills, with proficiency in at least one strongly typed language; we use Rust and C++ onboard, and Python for tooling
• Strong system mindset; able to see how the full system comes together
• Deep expertise in embedded Linux development, including experience with kernel modifications, userspace programming, and performance tuning
• Strong software architecture skills, with experience designing and shipping solutions for complex real-world use cases
• Strong communication and documentation; you make complex safety decisions legible and auditable.
• Able to bridge the gap between HW and SW, to ensure a robust system.
• Technical leadership to bring multiple stakeholders together to drive complex decisions forward.

What Else You Need to Know

This is an in-office role. We are looking for folks who can be in our South San Francisco offices at least 4 days per week.

The starting cash range for this role is $160,000 - 210,000 a year. 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, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

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!