Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise Systems

Company: Zipline
Location: South San Francisco
Posted on: April 4, 2026

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 the Role We’re building the systems that power Zipline operations end-to-end, giving us the ability to design faster, smarter workflows, connect data across the business, and remove the friction that slows teams down. The Enterprise Systems team builds the software that connects manufacturing, supply chain, finance, inventory, hardware quality assurance, and field operations into a single operational nervous system . These systems directly shape how quickly and effectively Zipline can manufacture, test, deploy, and operate our global drone fleet. Most companies adapt their operations to fit off-the-shelf enterprise software. At Zipline, we’re building our systems ourselves so the software can evolve with the business. Our philosophy is simple: business processes should inform system design, not the other way around. By owning these systems ourselves, we can rapidly iterate on workflows, automate complex operations, and continuously improve how the company operates as we scale. Engineers on this team own the product and work directly with the end users who rely on these systems every day, from manufacturing and supply chain teams to field operators running our delivery network. This proximity to real operations allows engineers to identify problems first-hand, design and build solutions end-to-end, and deliver systems that have immediate impact across the company. Why This Role Is Unique Enterprise Systems at Zipline sits at the intersection of software and real-world operations. The systems this team builds determine how efficiently we manufacture aircraft, move inventory, maintain traceability, deploy assets, and support a growing global delivery network. Build ERP from scratch. You’ll design and build the core systems that power Zipline, instead of configuring third-party systems. Extreme ownership. Engineers own problems end-to-end: identifying operational pain points, designing solutions, building systems, deploying them to production, and driving adoption across the business. Embedded with real operations. Engineers work directly with manufacturing, supply chain, finance, and field operations teams to understand workflows firsthand and build systems that solve real problems. AI-accelerated engineering. We lean heavily into AI and agentic workflows, taking advantage of the latest capabilities to accelerate development. Engineers effectively leverage and orchestrate AI tooling to increase velocity, quality, and throughput while maintaining strong engineering rigor. Hard Problems, Real Ownership Most software roles focus on building isolated features or optimizing digital experiences — this role is different. You’ll build the operational nervous system of the company, owning core business problem spaces that enable Zipline to manufacture, source, scale, and operate its global drone fleet. 95% of the company will use the tools that you build . You will solve problems like: How do we scale our manufacturing systems and tooling to increase production rates by orders of magnitude without scaling labor costs exponentially? How do we plan, execute, and automate manufacturing and supply chain systems to support aggressive fleet growth and increasing operational complexity? How do we build a trusted, end-to-end traceability system that captures the full lifecycle of every part — from design to production to operation? How do we create a true single source of truth across systems so data is consistent, reliable, and never fragmented? How do we design platforms that scale with the business without becoming bottlenecks for critical operational workflows? What We’re Looking For We care far more about how you approach problems than about experience with any specific technology. Strong candidates for this role typically have: Experience building and shipping production software systems Strong full-stack engineering fundamentals Ability to design scalable systems and services Comfort working directly with stakeholders to understand problems and define solutions Ownership mindset and the ability to drive projects end-to-end Interest in improving operational workflows and building systems that power real-world operations Our current stack includes technologies such as Python, Go, React, gRPC, Kafka, PostgreSQL, AWS, Bazel, Grafana, and Honeycomb , but we value engineers who can learn new tools quickly and focus on solving the right problems. We also lean heavily into AI-assisted and agentic engineering workflows , and we’re excited to work with engineers who are interested in using modern AI tooling to amplify their productivity while maintaining high standards for system design and code quality. What Else You Need to Know The starting cash range for this role is $180,000 - $270,000. 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, 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!

Keywords: Zipline, Santa Rosa , Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise Systems, Engineering , South San Francisco, California