Autonomy Software Engineer

About Zipline

Do you want to change the world? 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, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on‑demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers.

The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

Are you a systems thinker who thrives on bridging the gap between features and the real world? Do you love building software that ships across thousands of autonomous aircraft and enables life‑saving deliveries? At Zipline, we’re building the future of logistics—and we’re looking for a Staff Software Integration Engineer who is passionate about making autonomy work at scale.

This role is all about integration. You’ll be the person who takes a high-level feature—say, autonomous emergency landing or package retrieval—and makes it real. You’ll work across disciplines, from embedded autonomy to cloud orchestration, to stitch together the end‑to‑end implementation and ensure it’s validated, performant, and debuggable in the field. You’ll build tools, telemetry, and test strategies that help us deliver faster and more reliably, with confidence that what works in simulation works in flight.

You’ll have a wide impact, deep technical ownership, and the satisfaction of seeing your work operate every day in the physical world—serving people who depend on it.

• Lead the end-to-end integration of complex, cross‑functional features—from concept to deployment—ensuring alignment across autonomy, embedded software, backend systems, and operations.
• Architect and develop vehicle and mission management aircraft software in Rust
• Develop infrastructure and tooling that support scalable integration, flight testing, and in‑field debugging.
• Translate high‑level requirements into detailed software interfaces and implementation plans, focusing on reliability, testability, and observability.
• Define system‑level telemetry and performance metrics that allow Zipline to monitor and improve feature behavior in real time.
• Collaborate closely with autonomy engineers, flight operations, test teams, and hardware engineers to ensure features are both technically sound and operationally viable.
• Mentor other engineers on best practices and contribute to building a culture of ownership and cross‑functional collaboration.

• 10+ years of professional experience developing software for hardware products in a safety‑critical field, e.g. aerospace, robotics, medical devices, autonomous vehicles
• Expertise in writing safety critical code in one or more of:
  Rust, C++, C
• Demonstrated technical leadership in a production environment, writing software that runs on complex autonomous systems that operate in the real world
• Demonstrated success in integrating cross‑functional features into production systems—ideally in autonomous vehicles, drones, or industrial robotics.
• Deep experience in system‑level testing, triage, and validation, including familiarity with SIL/HIL environments
  .
• Experience building real‑world robotics systems and handling the long‑tail corner cases to ensure high uptime systems
• Ability to manage technical ambiguity, break down complex projects, and drive them to completion with minimal oversight.
• Passion for enabling others—whether through great tooling, clear documentation, or thoughtful debugging support.
• Must be eligible to work in the US.

This will be a hybrid…