Senior-Staff Software Engineer - Embedded Platform (Middleware)
About The Position
Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, focused on serving all humans equally by ensuring access to essential goods. They design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, making deliveries globally. The company is seeking practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth, motivated by building systems with a direct, meaningful impact. This role is for an Embedded Software Engineer to help build and evolve the embedded platform powering autonomous aircraft in safety-critical environments. The position is within the Embedded Platform team, responsible for foundational middleware and infrastructure for the flight software stack, enabling reliable communication, observability, deployment, and coordination between distributed onboard services on embedded Linux systems. The engineer will collaborate with Flight Software teams to design, implement, and scale critical platform capabilities supporting autonomy, reliability, and operational safety, ideal for those who enjoy solving complex systems problems and building robust infrastructure in embedded environments.
Requirements
- 5-12 years of experience developing embedded or systems software
- Strong programming skills in Rust, C++, or similar systems programming languages
- Experience working in embedded Linux environments
- Understanding of systems-level concepts such as: concurrency and synchronization, networking, IPC mechanisms, distributed or multi-process systems
- Experience designing and delivering reliable software systems
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills
- Ability to collaborate effectively across teams and technical domains
Nice To Haves
- Experience in safety-critical or high-reliability industries such as aerospace, automotive, robotics, industrial systems, or medical devices
- Experience with autonomous systems or robotics
- Familiarity with OTA update systems or device management infrastructure
- Experience with observability, telemetry, or logging systems
- Familiarity with Linux internals and embedded networking stacks
- Experience optimizing performance and reliability in resource-constrained systems
Responsibilities
- Design and develop embedded middleware and platform services for autonomous aircraft systems
- Contribute to core platform capabilities including: interprocess communication (IPC), logging and observability infrastructure, communication bridges, over-the-air (OTA) update systems, service lifecycle and reliability infrastructure
- Build scalable and reliable embedded systems that support an increasingly complex flight software ecosystem
- Collaborate with teams across the Flight Software organization to define interfaces, improve platform usability, and support integration efforts
- Write high-quality production software in Rust and C++
- Investigate and debug complex system-level issues across software and hardware boundaries
- Improve system performance, reliability, and operational visibility
- Participate in design reviews and contribute to technical direction for platform infrastructure
- Help establish and maintain strong engineering practices around testing, observability, and maintainability
Benefits
- medical, dental and vision insurance
- paid time off
- equity compensation
- discretionary annual or performance bonuses
- sales incentives
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
