Senior Software Engineer

Who you are

• We care far more about how you approach problems than experience with any specific technology. Strong candidates typically have:
• Experience operating low-latency, high-availability production services
• Hands-on experience with path planning, graph search, motion planning, or related optimization problems
• Extreme ownership mindset with a track record of driving projects end-to-end
• Comfort working on ambiguous, high-visibility / high-impact problems
• Ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams including autonomy and operations
• Strong backend or distributed systems engineering fundamentals
• Our current stack includes technologies such as Rust, Go, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, and AWS, but we value engineers who can learn quickly and focus on solving the right problems
• We also lean heavily into AI-assisted engineering workflows and expect engineers to use modern tools to amplify productivity while maintaining high standards for system design and code quality

What the job involves

• The Routing team determines how every Zipline aircraft moves through the world. You will design safe and efficient flight paths that guide Zips through complex, ever-changing airspace - navigating obstacles, uncertainty, and dynamic conditions in real time, with your work showing up in live flights every day
• You will build optimization algorithms that compute the global set of routes executed autonomously by Zips - balancing reliability, throughput, and flight performance at scale. These systems operate in real time and must account for weather, airspace restrictions, vehicle performance, operational priorities, and dynamic demand
• This is a highly visible, safety-critical function with direct operational impact. The systems you build determine how fast we deliver, how efficiently we scale, and how safely we operate in increasingly complex environments
• Engineers on this team work at the intersection of autonomy, distributed systems, and real-world operations. You will collaborate closely with autonomy and flight operations teams to design and build systems that directly power flight operations
• Build the brain of the delivery network. You’ll design systems that determine how aircraft move through real-world airspace at global scale
• Real-world impact. Every improvement you make shows up in delivery speed, network throughput, and how reliably we operate
• Deep technical challenges. Routing sits at the intersection of optimization, distributed systems, real-time decision-making, and high-reliability infrastructure
• Real-time, high-availability services. Routing is a high-visibility service: low latency, deterministic behavior, strong SLAs, and robust fault-tolerance matter
• AI-accelerated engineering. We leverage modern AI and agentic workflows to increase engineering velocity while maintaining strong system rigor
• This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy combining algorithmic problem-solving with building high-reliability production systems that operate in the real world