Staff Software Integration Engineer – Autonomous Systems

About Zipline 

Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

About You and the Role

Are you a seasoned engineer excited by the challenge of solving deeply technical problems that directly impact the real world? Do you thrive on building sophisticated, safety-critical systems that power thousands of autonomous flights and deliver life-saving services every day? At Zipline, we’re redefining logistics through cutting-edge autonomy—and we’re looking for an exceptional Staff Software Integration Engineer to push our systems to new levels of reliability, safety, and scalability.

In this role, you will be at the center of it all. You'll take ambitious, high-impact features—such as autonomous emergency landings and precision delivery operations—and turn them from vision into reality. Your work will span embedded autonomy systems, cloud infrastructure, telemetry, and operational tools, ensuring every feature you integrate meets the highest standards for safety, performance, and robustness. You’ll collaborate deeply across engineering disciplines, drive the technical direction of critical projects, and create the infrastructure and strategies necessary for validating, testing, and deploying solutions that perform flawlessly under real-world conditions.

Your contributions will have immediate impact, shaping the future of autonomous logistics and positively affecting lives worldwide.

What You'll Do 

• Own and lead the full integration cycle for complex, multidisciplinary features—from ideation through deployment—bridging autonomy, embedded systems, backend software, and operational teams.
• Architect and implement mission-critical aircraft software in Rust, driving innovation in vehicle and mission management.
• Develop robust infrastructure and tooling to streamline integration workflows, enable scalable flight testing, and facilitate efficient in-field debugging.
• Translate high-level objectives into actionable software interfaces and implementation strategies, emphasizing reliability, ease of testing, and system observability.
• Define and implement system-level telemetry and performance metrics, empowering Zipline to proactively monitor, evaluate, and continuously improve feature performance in real-time.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with autonomy engineers, flight operations, testing teams, and hardware specialists to ensure seamless technical execution and operational effectiveness.
• Mentor and empower fellow engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and collaborative problem-solving.

What You'll Bring  

• 10+ years of proven experience developing software for complex, safety-critical hardware systems such as aerospace, autonomous vehicles, robotics, or medical devices.
• Deep expertise writing robust, safety-critical code in Rust, C++, or C.
• Demonstrated technical leadership deploying software solutions on sophisticated autonomous systems operating in challenging real-world environments.
• Extensive experience integrating cross-disciplinary features into production-level systems, particularly in autonomous vehicles, drone systems, or industrial robotics.
• Strong track record in system-level testing and validation, including familiarity with Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) methodologies.
• Proven ability to tackle real-world robotics challenges, effectively addressing edge cases to maintain consistently high system availability and reliability.
• Exceptional skill managing technical ambiguity, decomposing complex projects into clear deliverables, and driving them to successful completion independently.
• Passion for enabling teams, through exceptional tooling, clear documentation, and insightful debugging support.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW   

This will be a hybrid role based out of our South San Francisco HQs. 

The starting cash range for this role is $210,000 - $265,000. 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 for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; overtime pay; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; 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, 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. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!