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Senior or Staff Software Engineer – Cloud Communications Platform

South San Francisco, California, USA

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

Zipline operates a large-scale autonomous system that depends on reliable, low latency communication between vehicles, ground infrastructure, and cloud services. Our Cloud Communications team owns the platform that moves critical data from embedded systems into the cloud and ensures that data is reliable, scalable, and observable.

We are looking for a Senior or Staff Software Engineer to expand and harden this platform. This role focuses on connecting hardware assets to the cloud, hosting and orchestrating new data use cases, and building distributed observability that spans embedded software, cellular networks, and cloud microservices.

You will work closely with Embedded and Autonomy teams who design software to get data off devices. Your responsibility is to ensure that data is securely ingested into the cloud, deduplicated, stored, processed, monitored, and made available for both real time and offline workflows.

This is a high ownership role with direct impact on flight reliability, operational visibility, and the scalability of our global network.

What You’ll Do

  • Own and evolve the services that connect vehicles, charging and loading stations, fulfillment hardware, and other field deployed infrastructure to the cloud
  • Design and maintain asset-to-cloud APIs, message schemas, and communication clients in partnership with embedded teams
  • Build and operate ingestion pipelines for new data streams, including high volume perception and telemetry data generated by vehicles and ground systems
  • Design systems for deduplication, validation, and scalable storage of high volume telemetry and event data
  • Ensure secure provisioning of hardware assets, including certificate management and integration with internal provisioning systems
  • Expand cross-stack telemetry to measure latency and uptime across embedded systems, cellular networks, and cloud infrastructure
  • Build correlation systems that link events in vehicle software to cloud-side signals such as service errors or streaming backlogs
  • Develop tooling and dashboards that allow engineering and operations teams to monitor the health of device-to-cloud interactions and track reliability trends
  • Improve correctness, testability, and auditability of distributed systems that operate in safety critical contexts
  • Contribute across the stack as needed, from backend services and infrastructure to internal tooling

Basic Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience building and operating reliable distributed systems
  • Experience designing APIs and data models for high volume or real time systems
  • Experience with cloud infrastructure such as AWS and container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes
  • Experience building or operating streaming and messaging systems
  • Strong fundamentals in networking, security, and systems design
  • Track record of owning problems end to end, from design through production operation
  • Clear and concise communication skills and comfort working across hardware, embedded, and cloud teams

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience working on systems that interface with hardware or embedded devices
  • Experience building observability platforms, telemetry pipelines, or reliability tooling
  • Experience with certificate based authentication and secure device provisioning
  • Experience debugging complex, cross system failures that span client, network, and server layers
  • Experience in safety critical or high reliability domains

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $180,000 - 250,000. Please note that this is a target starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate’s experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package may also include equity compensation, discretionary bonuses, benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance, paid time off, and more.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by law.

We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you are excited about the role but unsure whether you meet every qualification, we encourage you to apply.

Please Note

We have received reports stating that certain individuals are reaching out under false pretenses, claiming to be Zipline employees or representatives. They may seek to gain access to your personal information or to acquire money by offering fictitious employment opportunities.

Genuine Zipline employees or representatives will never ask you for money or payment in exchange for employment opportunities or related services. Any such offer that claims to be from us is deceitful and part of a fraud.

If you believe you have been targeted by a fraudulent party, please contact us at security@flyzipline.com upon receiving a suspicious offer or claim.

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