Senior Embedded Linux Platform Lead for Autonomous Flight

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Bonuses

Medical insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an experienced engineer to own embedded middleware services for autonomous aircraft. You will drive architecture, implement robust interfaces, and work across flight software, hardware, and integration teams to ensure reliability on embedded Linux aircraft systems.

You will deliver production-grade Rust and C++ with strong focus on diagnostics, testing, and maintainability, while shaping platform boundaries and design reviews for safer deployments.

Qualifications

• 5–12 years developing embedded, systems, or platform software in production environments.
• Strong Rust, C++, or comparable systems-programming skills for embedded Linux.
• Knowledge of concurrency, synchronization, networking, IPC, and distributed/multi‑process systems.
• Experience designing interfaces and leading cross‑functional delivery.

Responsibilities

• Own design, implementation, validation, and lifecycle of embedded middleware services.
• Define interfaces for IPC, OTA updates, logging, observability, and service lifecycle.
• Deliver production Rust and C++ with tests, diagnostics, and maintainability.
• Set technical direction for cross‑service platform architecture and tradeoffs.
• Collaborate with flight software, hardware, and integration teams to ensure reliability on embedded Linux aircraft systems.
• Investigate failures across software, OS, network, and hardware boundaries to improve reliability.
• Establish design-review practices to make services safer to deploy and easier to diagnose.

Skills

Rust

C++

Embedded Linux

IPC

Networking

Concurrency

Cross-team collab

Job description

Zipline is seeking an experienced engineer to own embedded middleware services for autonomous aircraft. You will drive architecture, implement robust interfaces, and work across flight software, hardware, and integration teams to ensure reliability on embedded Linux aircraft systems.

You will deliver production-grade Rust and C++ with strong focus on diagnostics, testing, and maintainability, while shaping platform boundaries and design reviews for safer deployments.