Senior Software Engineer, Maintenance Systems

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.

The Repair and Reliability Platform team builds the systems that preserve asset health and keep the delivery network operational as aircraft, infrastructure, and fleet complexity scale. We create software that detects issues in live operations, orchestrates maintenance and repair workflows, evaluates airworthiness, and helps technicians return constrained assets to service quickly and safely.

This team owns the operational backbone that connects fleet health, maintenance execution, technician operations, and return-to-service decisions into a single reliability platform. The systems we build directly influence aircraft availability, delivery capacity, operational safety, and the network’s ability to scale reliably.

What you will own

You will own software in the critical path of fleet reliability and maintenance operations, including:

• fleet health and asset visibility systems that track the operational state of aircraft, infrastructure, and distributed site assets
• maintenance orchestration platforms for issue management, work orders, technician workflows, and scheduled maintenance execution
• airworthiness and configuration control systems that evaluate whether aircraft can safely return to service
• usage tracking and lifecycle systems that monitor component wear and drive preventative maintenance policies
• operational tooling used by maintenance teams, service engineering, and flight operations to diagnose issues, coordinate interventions, and maintain fleet readiness
• reliability automation and event-driven systems that connect live operational signals to issue detection and repair workflows

Hard problems, real ownership

Most software roles optimize digital experiences. This role helps maintain and restore a live autonomous logistics network.

You will work on problems like:

• maintaining trustworthy real-time visibility into fleet health across aircraft, infrastructure, and distributed operational sites
• preventing avoidable downtime by detecting degradation before it impacts delivery operations
• building systems that connect issue detection to fast, correct maintenance execution and return-to-service decisions
• designing operational tooling that helps technicians and operators make reliable decisions under time pressure
• evaluating airworthiness and maintenance policy compliance at fleet scale
• managing maintenance workflows across a globally distributed network with evolving hardware configurations and operational constraints

These are production systems with immediate operational consequences. The software you build directly impacts fleet availability, operational safety, delivery capacity, and operator trust.

You will own critical parts of the platform end to end, make technical and product decisions, and shape how reliability systems scale across the network.

How we work

This team operates with high ownership, high trust, and a high technical bar. Engineers are expected to identify important operational problems, develop a clear point of view on how systems should behave, and drive solutions from concept through production.

We value engineers who combine strong systems thinking with operational empathy and who care deeply about building software operators and technicians can trust under real-world conditions.

We also expect engineers to use AI tooling effectively as a force multiplier across exploration, implementation, debugging, and operational analysis, while maintaining strong engineering rigor, judgment, and accountability.

What you will bring

You are likely a strong fit if you:

• have experience building reliable production systems in operationally complex environments
• can turn ambiguous reliability and maintenance problems into durable software systems others depend on
• combine strong backend and systems engineering judgment with product instinct and operational awareness
• care deeply about correctness, reliability, safety, and operator trust
• can simplify operational complexity and design abstractions that scale across fleets, assets, and workflows
• thrive in environments where software, hardware, and operations are tightly coupled
• are comfortable owning systems with real-world consequences and high expectations for reliability
• want to shape architecture, operational workflows, and long-term platform direction, not just implement scoped features

This role is best suited to engineers who want to own critical operational systems, make consequential technical decisions, and help scale the reliability backbone of a real-world autonomous logistics network.

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $150,000-$230,000 base salary. Please note that this is a target starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash payment for this role will depend on various factors, including a specific candidate’s experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may include equity compensation; 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, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

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!

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.