Autonomy Platform Software Engineer

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

14h•Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, dedicated to providing access to food, medicine, and essential goods globally. They design, build, and operate an autonomous logistics system, having completed millions of deliveries across four continents. Their system aims to strengthen supply chains, reduce congestion, and save lives, operating with over 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown. Zipline seeks practical problem solvers motivated by building systems with meaningful impact and scaling the future of logistics. The role is for a systems-minded Software Engineer focused on autonomy, embedded Linux, and hardware, reporting to the Head of Droid Autonomy. The engineer will own the delivery runtime end-to-end, including bringing up compute and sensors on Jetson/Linux, designing flight/runtime orchestration (mission state machines, behavior gating, safe-state transitions), and building observability tools (logging, health monitoring, replay) for post-flight validation. The ideal candidate possesses deep Linux expertise (kernel, userspace, performance tuning), experience shipping robotic applications, strong software architecture skills in strongly-typed languages (Rust/C++ for onboard, Python for tooling), clear communication, the ability to make auditable safety decisions, and bridge hardware-software gaps while leading cross-functional stakeholders.

Requirements

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.

Responsibilities

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.