Senior Embedded Software Engineer

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an experienced engineer to join the Embedded Platform team, owning middleware services for autonomous aircraft. You will design and deliver IPC, OTA updates, logging, observability, and service lifecycle interfaces, using Rust and C++ on embedded Linux.

You will collaborate across flight-software, hardware, and integration teams to ensure dependable platform services on aerospace-grade systems.

Qualifications

• 5–12 years developing embedded, systems, or platform software in production environments.
• Strong Rust, C++, or comparable systems-programming skills, with experience delivering reliable software on embedded Linux.
• Experience designing technical interfaces and carrying cross-functional integrations through delivery.
• For Staff-level scope, a record of leading architecture across multiple systems and influencing decisions beyond an individual component.

Responsibilities

• Own the design, implementation, validation, and lifecycle of embedded middleware services for autonomous aircraft.
• Define and evolve IPC, communications-bridge, OTA-update, logging, observability, and service-lifecycle interfaces used across flight software.
• Deliver production Rust and C++ with testing, diagnostics, and maintainability built into each platform capability.
• Set technical direction for cross-service platform architecture, including interface decisions and tradeoffs that affect multiple flight-software teams.
• Partner with flight-software, hardware, and integration teams to ensure platform services operate reliably on embedded Linux aircraft systems.
• Investigate failures across software, operating-system, network, and hardware boundaries; drive corrective changes that improve reliability, performance, and operational visibility.
• Establish design-review and engineering practices that make services safer to deploy, easier to diagnose, and practical for downstream teams to adopt.

Skills

Rust

C++

Embedded Linux

IPC

Concurrency

Networking

Job description

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

Autonomous aircraft need onboard software that communicates, updates, reports health, and recovers predictably in safety-critical environments. The Embedded Platform team builds the middleware and infrastructure beneath the flight software stack on embedded Linux systems.

You will own shared platform capabilities from architecture through production delivery, with success measured by dependable updates, diagnosable failures, stable service interfaces, and reliable integration for flight-software teams. Senior engineers lead substantial services and integrations; Staff engineers set direction across platform boundaries, resolve architectural tradeoffs, and establish standards used across the shared stack.

What You’ll Do

• Own the design, implementation, validation, and lifecycle of embedded middleware services for autonomous aircraft.
• Define and evolve IPC, communications-bridge, OTA-update, logging, observability, and service-lifecycle interfaces used across flight software.
• Deliver production Rust and C++ with testing, diagnostics, and maintainability built into each platform capability.
• Set technical direction for cross-service platform architecture, including interface decisions and tradeoffs that affect multiple flight-software teams.
• Partner with flight-software, hardware, and integration teams to ensure platform services operate reliably on embedded Linux aircraft systems.
• Investigate failures across software, operating-system, network, and hardware boundaries; drive corrective changes that improve reliability, performance, and operational visibility.
• Establish design-review and engineering practices that make services safer to deploy, easier to diagnose, and practical for downstream teams to adopt.

What You’ll Bring

• 5–12 years developing embedded, systems, or platform software in production environments.
• Strong Rust, C++, or comparable systems-programming skills, with experience delivering reliable software on embedded Linux.
• Working knowledge of concurrency, synchronization, networking, IPC, and distributed or multi-process systems.
• Ability to debug complex behavior across services, operating systems, networks, and hardware.
• Experience designing technical interfaces and carrying cross-functional integrations through delivery.
• For Staff-level scope, a record of leading architecture across multiple systems and influencing decisions beyond an individual component.
• Experience in aerospace, robotics, automotive, industrial, medical, or another high-reliability domain; autonomy, OTA, telemetry, Linux internals, or resource-constrained optimization are relevant.

What Else You Need To Know

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.

We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech.