South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$200k–$265k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Rust, C++, Embedded Linux, RTOS, SIL/HIL
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
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 des…
Skills: Construction Management, Project Management, Contractor Management, Bid Evaluation, Design Review
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$180k–$265k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Deep Learning, Object Detection, Object Tracking, Geometric Computer Vision, Stereo Vision
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$110k–$135k/yr
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 des…
Skills: SQL, Data Visualization, Python, Business Intelligence, KPI Tracking
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$150k–$200k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Calendar Management, Executive Support, Technical Communication, Travel Coordination, Recruiting Coordination
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$118k–$180k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Production Planning, Manufacturing Execution, NPI, Labor Planning, Material Readiness
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$160k–$225k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Design Management, Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering, Infrastructure Design, Site Development
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$160k–$225k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Multidisciplinary Design Leadership, Engineering Standardization, Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering, Electrical Engineering
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$175k–$250k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Service Operations, Field Service Management, Organizational Scaling, Staffing Models, Safety Leadership
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$160k–$225k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Project Engineering, New Product Introduction, Cross-functional Leadership, Root Cause Analysis, Systems Engineering
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$130k–$165k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Battery Modeling, Electrochemical Modeling, Equivalent Circuit Models, Battery State Estimation, Cell Characterization
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$175k–$250k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Construction Management, Strategic Planning, Contractor Management, Budgeting, Project Controls
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
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 des…
Skills: Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Python, Embedded C, Hardware Testing
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$60/hr–$65/hr
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 des…
Skills: Full-Cycle Recruiting, University Recruiting, Event Planning, Stakeholder Management, Candidate Engagement
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$200k–$260k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Quantitative Risk Analysis, Fault Tree Analysis, FMEA, Risk Modeling, Systems Engineering
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
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 des…
Skills: Technical Program Management, Hardware Project Delivery, Strategic Roadmapping, Systems Thinking, Risk Management
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
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 des…
Skills: Program Management, Risk Mitigation, Cross-functional Leadership, Technical Communication, Timeline Definition
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$130k–$190k/yr
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 des…
Skills: PCBA Manufacturing, Design For Manufacturing (DfM), Supplier Quality Management, Root Cause Analysis, Statistical Process Control (SPC)
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$180k–$270k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Frontend Development, Backend Development, Customer Acquisition, A/B Testing, Data Analytics
South San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
$200k–$270k/yr
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 des…
Skills: Full Stack Development, Frontend Development, Backend Development, System Design, API Design
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Architect and ship the autonomy safety layer and flight-critical runtime to ensure aircraft remain in a safe state. This includes designing mission managers, implementing fault management (FIMR), and validating behaviors through SIL/HIL and flight logs.
Requires 8+ years of experience building production software for robotics, aerospace, or safety-critical embedded systems. Expertise in Rust or C++ for real-time applications and a strong track record of shipping autonomy features in dynamic environments are essential.
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.
Own the flight-critical runtime that keeps Zipline aircraft in a known safe state—no matter what the world throws at them. You’ll architect and ship the autonomy safety layer that orchestrates missions, detects/diagnoses faults, and executes mitigation and recovery across planning, perception, and controls. This is deep systems work in Rust/C++ with tight real-time constraints: you’ll make high-judgment design decisions, prove them in SIL/HIL and flight logs, and raise the bar on reliability for a global, safety-critical fleet.
Design the mission/flight manager: build the state machines and orchestration logic that govern mission sequencing, safe-state transitions, and behavior gating under latency and resource constraints.
Own fault management end-to-end: implement detection, isolation, mitigation, and recovery (FIMR) for sensors, compute, comms, power, and actuation; ensure graceful degradation and continuity of service.
Ship flight-critical Rust/C++: develop and maintain core onboard components with strong observability (health, logs, metrics) and testability (deterministic replay, assertions, invariants).
Prove safety before flight: define success criteria and build the tooling—scenario libraries, SIL/HIL, log-replay harnesses, fault-injection—to validate behaviors across edge cases and long-tail conditions.
Integrate across autonomy: partner with planning, perception, and controls to set interfaces, hazards/assumptions, and escalation paths; codify contracts that the runtime enforces.
Close the loop with operations: turn fleet telemetry and incident reviews into requirements and fixes; drive MTBF/MTTR improvements and intervention-rate reductions.
Lead with systems judgment: write design docs, perform hazard analysis (e.g., FMEA/STPA-style), run design/PR reviews, and mentor engineers on deep-stack ownership.
8+ years building production software for robotics, aerospace, AV, or other safety-critical embedded systems.
Expert in Rust and/or C++ (C as a plus) for real-time, fault-tolerant applications on embedded Linux/RTOS.
Demonstrated systems thinking: clear interface design, resource budgeting, and trade-offs under timing/safety/power constraints.
Hands-on with SIL/HIL, scenario validation, log replay, and fault injection; you measure reliability, not just functionality.
Track record of shipping autonomy features (mission logic, supervision, watchdogs, health monitoring) into noisy, dynamic real-world environments.
Comfort in HW/SW co-design: you can reason about sensors, compute, comms, and actuators well enough to make robust software decisions.
Strong communication and documentation; you make complex safety decisions legible and auditable.
Your background is primarily web/backend/app platforms with limited embedded or autonomy exposure.
You prefer building general cloud tooling over flight-critical runtime software that directly governs vehicles.
At Zipline, your code will decide—not just observe. If you’re ready to own the runtime that keeps aircraft safe while we scale autonomous delivery worldwide, we’d love to talk.
This will be an in-office role based out of our South San Francisco HQs.
The starting cash range for this role is $200,000 - $265,000; please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. We are always open to negotiation. 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!
Zipline was founded to create the first logistics system that serves all humans equally. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges. Leveraging expertise in robotics and autonomy, Zipline designs, manufactures and operates the world’s largest automated delivery system. Zipline serves tens of millions of people around the world and is making good on the promise of building an equitable and more resilient global supply chain. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart and enabling leading healthcare providers to bring care into the home in the United States, Zipline is transforming the way goods move. By transitioning to clean, electric, instant logistics, we can decarbonize delivery, decrease road congestion, and reduce fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access for billions of people. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Zipline is inspiring people, governments, and businesses to imagine what is possible when goods can move as seamlessly as information. To join the team, check out our career page: https://flyzipline.com/careers/
Offices: 333 Corey Way, South San Francisco, California 94080, US
Based on 212 listings with disclosed salaries, most engineering jobs in South San Francisco, CA pay between $120k–$250k per year. Individual offers vary with seniority, company size, and specialization.
There are currently 276 open engineering positions in South San Francisco, CA listed on Clera. New openings are added daily as companies post roles.
Companies currently hiring include Zipline, Roche, MSD, Xaira Therapeutics, Cellares, among others. Browse the listings above to see every active employer.
Yes — 26 of the 276 open engineering positions offer remote or hybrid work (2 remote, 24 hybrid).
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