Sr. SWE Datacenter Automation

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

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Infrastructure team in South San Francisco. You will own the datacenter compute and storage lifecycle, from bare-metal provisioning to Kubernetes lifecycle, while shaping automation to speed deployments and reduce manual work.

You will drive reliability with SLIs/SLOs, lead incident management for flight-critical infra, and implement monitoring, capacity planning, and cost controls across the global platform.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of engineering experience with at least 4 years owning production datacenter, virtualization, or infrastructure automation systems.
• Deep, hands-on expertise with bare-metal provisioning and imaging (PXE/iPXE, IPMI, Redfish), hypervisors (KVM/qemu, ESXi or equivalent), and storage systems (Ceph, NVMeoF, SAN) at scale.
• Proven Kubernetes operations experience: cluster provisioning, upgrades, control-plane HA, kubeadm/cluster API or equivalent, CNI and CSI troubleshooting, and workload scheduling at multi-cluster scale.
• Production-grade automation and coding skills in one or more languages (Python, Go, or Rust) and experience with CI/CD pipelines, Terraform/Ansible/Helm, and GitOps practices.
• Strong networking fundamentals: VLANs, BGP/EVPN at leaf/spine, LACP, routing, and network troubleshooting for cluster networking and storage fabrics.
• On-call and incident experience: you have owned postmortems, SLIs/SLOs, and driven reliability improvements under operational pressure.
• Physical datacenter readiness: able to work on-site in South San Francisco HQ with regular in-office cadence, plus occasional travel to partner datacenters or field sites and hands-on rack/cable/repair work when required.
• Security and safety mindset: experience operating in regulated or safety-sensitive environments, following change control and audit processes.
• Clear communication and cross-team ownership: you will partner with flight software, field ops, hardware, and SRE teams and must translate operational needs into automated, testable systems.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end lifecycle for datacenter compute and storage: bare-metal provisioning, hypervisor management, SAN/NVMe storage clusters, network configuration, and Kubernetes cluster lifecycle.
• Design, build, and operate automation that reduces manual setup time and increases deployment velocity: PXE/firmware workflows, dynamic inventory, image generation, fleet-wide configuration drift detection, and automated recovery playbooks.
• Deliver measurable reliability and scale improvements: set SLIs/SLOs for provisioning time, node commissioning success rate, cluster upgrade success rate, and mean time to recover (MTTR); own meeting those targets.
• Lead cross-functional runbook and incident ownership for infra incidents affecting flight operations or telemetry: on-call rotation, incident commander for datacenter platform incidents, postmortems and action items.
• Instrument and maintain monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for hardware health, hypervisor performance, storage latency, Kubernetes control plane health, and cluster autoscaling behavior.
• Implement cost, capacity, and lifecycle management: capacity planning for compute/storage, automated reclamation, firmware/BIOS/hypervisor patch pipelines, and cold-standby / failover procedures for critical systems.
• Execute hands-on tasks when required: racking and cabling in datacenters, troubleshooting hardware failures, capture forensic logs, and coordinate physical repairs with vendors and field ops.

Skills

Datacenter infrastructure

Bare-metal provisioning

KVM/qemu virtualization

ESXi

Ceph

NVMeoF

Kubernetes operations

CI/CD pipelines

Python

Go

Rust

Terraform

Ansible

Helm

GitOps

Networking fundamentals

VLANs/BGP/EVPN

On-call/incidents

Tools

PXE/iPXE

IPMI/Redfish

KVM

SAN

Hypervisor management

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

You will be a Senior Software Engineer on Zipline’s Infrastructure team, owning the infrastructure that runs our global autonomous delivery platform. Zipline operates safety‑critical logistics at scale: we run private datacenters and edge compute to support flight operations, simulation, CI/CD, and production services that deliver millions of flights and time‑sensitive medical deliveries. This role sits at the intersection of hardware, virtualization, orchestration, and automation. Your work directly impacts deployment velocity, compute cost, and the reliability of systems supporting Zipline’s operations.

What You'll Do

• Own end‑to‑end lifecycle for datacenter compute and storage: bare‑metal provisioning, hypervisor management, SAN/NVMe storage clusters, network configuration, and Kubernetes cluster lifecycle.
• Design, build, and operate automation that reduces manual setup time and increases deployment velocity: PXE/firmware workflows, dynamic inventory, image generation, fleet‑wide configuration drift detection, and automated recovery playbooks.
• Deliver measurable reliability and scale improvements: set SLIs/SLOs for provisioning time, node commissioning success rate, cluster upgrade success rate, and mean time to recover (MTTR); own meeting those targets.
• Lead cross‑functional runbook and incident ownership for infra incidents affecting flight operations or telemetry: on‑call rotation, incident commander for datacenter platform incidents, postmortems and action items.
• Instrument and maintain monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for hardware health, hypervisor performance, storage latency, Kubernetes control plane health, and cluster autoscaling behavior.
• Implement cost, capacity, and lifecycle management: capacity planning for compute/storage, automated reclamation, firmware/BIOS/hypervisor patch pipelines, and cold‑standby / failover procedures for critical systems.
• Execute hands‑on tasks when required: racking and cabling in datacenters, troubleshooting hardware failures, capture forensic logs, and coordinate physical repairs with vendors and field ops.

What You'll Bring

• 5+ years of engineering experience with at least 4 years owning production datacenter, virtualization, or infrastructure automation systems.
• Deep, hands‑on expertise with bare‑metal provisioning and imaging (PXE/iPXE, IPMI, Redfish), hypervisors (KVM/qemu, ESXi or equivalent), and storage systems (Ceph, NVMeoF, SAN) at scale.
• Proven Kubernetes operations experience: cluster provisioning, upgrades, control‑plane HA, kubeadm/cluster API or equivalent, CNI and CSI troubleshooting, and workload scheduling at multi‑cluster scale.
• Production‑grade automation and coding skills in one or more languages (Python, Go, or Rust) and experience with CI/CD pipelines, Terraform/Ansible/Helm, and GitOps practices.
• Strong networking fundamentals: VLANs, BGP/EVPN at leaf/spine, LACP, routing, and network troubleshooting for cluster networking and storage fabrics.
• On‑call and incident experience: you have owned postmortems, SLIs/SLOs, and driven reliability improvements under operational pressure.
• Physical datacenter readiness: able to work on‑site in South San Francisco HQ with regular in‑office cadence, plus occasional travel to partner datacenters or field sites and hands‑on rack/cable/repair work when required.
• Security and safety mindset: experience operating in regulated or safety‑sensitive environments, following change control and audit processes.
• Clear communication and cross‑team ownership: you will partner with flight software, field ops, hardware, and SRE teams and must translate operational needs into automated, testable systems.

What Else You Need To Know

This role is based in South San Francisco with an expectation of regular on‑site presence and participation in on‑call rotations and occasional travel to datacenter or field locations.

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.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.