Senior Embedded Software Engineer (Linux Middleware)

Zipline; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a senior staff level embedded platform engineer to own the design, implementation, validation, and lifecycle of middleware services for autonomous aircraft. You will define IPC, OTA-update, logging, observability, and service-lifecycle interfaces used by flight software teams.

The role requires strong Rust and C++ skills on embedded Linux, with experience delivering reliable software in safety-critical, high-reliability environments.

Qualifications

• 5–12 years developing embedded, systems, or platform software in production environments.
• Experience designing technical interfaces and delivering cross-functional integrations.

Responsibilities

• Own design, implementation, validation, and lifecycle of embedded middleware services.
• Define and evolve IPC, communications-bridge, OTA-update, logging, observability, and service-lifecycle interfaces.
• Deliver production Rust and C++ with testing, diagnostics, and maintainability built into each platform capability.
• Set technical direction for cross-service platform architecture across flight-software teams.
• Partner with flight-software, hardware, and integration teams to ensure platform services operate reliably on embedded Linux aircraft systems.

Skills

Rust

C++

Embedded Linux

IPC

Systems programming

Job description

• 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
• 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

• Ability to debug complex behavior across services, operating systems, networks, and hardware5-12 years developing embedded, systems, or platform software in production environmentsExperience designing technical interfaces and carrying cross-functional integrations through deliveryFor Staff-level scope, a record of leading architecture across multiple systems and influencing decisions beyond an individual componentExperience in aerospace, robotics, automotive, industrial, medical, or another high-reliability domain; autonomy, OTA, telemetry, Linux internals, or resource-constrained optimization are relevantStrong Rust, C++, or comparable systems-programming skills, with experience delivering reliable software on embedded LinuxWorking knowledge of concurrency, synchronization, networking, IPC, and distributed or multi-process systems