Senior Software Engineer - Field 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. ABOUT YOU AND THE ROLE Are you eager to apply your technical skills to solve real-world problems and drive meaningful change? Do you thrive in environments where you're given ownership, creative freedom, and complex challenges to tackle? If so, join our Field Systems Engineering team at Zipline—where your work directly impacts lives every day. Zipline’s long-range drone platform began operations in Rwanda in 2016. With a fixed-wing design capable of flying over 200 km on a single charge, our drones enable fast, reliable delivery of critical medical supplies to remote communities. From helping new mothers in Rwanda to saving snake bite victims in Ghana, Zipline’s technology has already served millions across the African continent—delivering thousands of life-saving products daily. The Field Systems Engineering (FSE) team operates at the intersection of Engineering and Operations. We ensure that the equipment we design is safe, robust, and reliable—because lives depend on it. As a Field Systems Engineer focused on Software, you’ll play a crucial role in optimizing the performance and reliability of our long-range drone systems. In this role, you’ll work closely with a range of cross-functional engineers and flight operators to identify friction points in how our software supports daily operations for our Platform 1 vehicle that is supporting operations around the world. You’ll lead anomaly investigations, define data-driven requirements, and drive execution of improvement projects to enhance system reliability, ease of maintenance, and overall usability. Whether you're implementing direct software improvements or coordinating efforts across multiple teams, your goal is to ensure the platform runs smoothly and efficiently. At times, you’ll step into a technical program management role—helping unblock other engineers, align priorities, and drive key projects forward. Success in this role requires an entrepreneurial mindset, strong technical foundation, excellent communication skills, and the ability to translate between the needs of operators in the field and the engineers building the system. If you thrive at the intersection of software and real-world impact, and enjoy bringing clarity and progress to complex systems, you’ll feel right at home here. WHAT YOU'LL DO Optimize and improve a complex, real-world system used daily by operators—delivering timely solutions while e