Maps Intern (Fall 2026)

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 B as fast as possible. 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 seek people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record-breaking speeds.

About The Maps Team

The Maps Team is building long-term scalable solutions that enable Zipline to fly in new countries and regions as rapidly as possible. This team is responsible for building tools and services that produce artifacts used by our vehicles to fly their missions in the real world. The outputs from the Maps Team define the places our vehicles will fly, their constraints, and provide strong priors for the real-time system on the vehicle to follow to accomplish its mission safely.

Responsibilities

• Work on services that generate routes and spatial planning artifacts
• Use tools to visualize and evaluate geospatial features that impact serviceability
• Work with teams to make spatial data accessible instantaneously anywhere in the world
• Improve planning algorithms to make routing fast, safe, and reliable

Examples of Previous Internship Projects

• Prototyping a new path planning algorithm to enhance long-range routes
• Incorporating multidimensional risk data into the routing engine
• Creating tooling for generating composite Digital Elevation Models
• Building infrastructure to enable our zips to survey large areas

Requirements

• Must have at least completed the second year of your Undergraduate studies. Masters and PhD students are also eligible
• Strong analytical and technical problem-solving skills
• Deep understanding of algorithmic optimization
• Proficient coding and programming skills
• Understanding of automated testing practices

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting or developing novel algorithmic research
• Experience with spatial data

Schedule

This internship is a full-time, in-person position at our South San Francisco office. The Fall 2026 internship runs from September to December.