Principal Software Engineer, Application Software

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.

What You’ll Do

• Own high-impact software across one or more parts of Zipline’s application platform, such as:
  • Partner, merchant, and internal operations tools that help teams run the business day to day
  • Marketplace, fulfillment, billing, and support systems that connect demand, delivery, and financial correctness
  • Network operations software for simulation, real-time visibility, intervention, orchestration, maintenance, and asset health
  • Enterprise systems that power manufacturing, supply chain, inventory, traceability, finance, quality, and field operations
• Work closely with the people who use these systems every day, from operators and field teams to manufacturing, supply chain, finance, commercial, product, and partner teams
• Identify ambiguous problems, design durable systems, build production software end to end, and drive adoption

Why This Role Is Unique

• This team builds the software backbone of Zipline’s autonomous logistics network, turning complex real-world operations into reliable systems that scale
• You’ll solve problems like:
• How do we give operators and partners real-time visibility into a complex physical network?
• How do we keep the network moving when demand shifts, weather changes, assets degrade, or capacity gets tight?
• How do we build financial and operational systems where every transaction, part, order, and aircraft state is traceable?
• How do we automate workflows across manufacturing, supply chain, fulfillment, and field operations without losing correctness?
• How do we design software that scales across countries, metros, verticals, and millions of deliveries?
• You’ll have real ownership, make technical and product decisions, and help shape how Zipline scales

What We’re Looking For

• You may be a strong fit if you:
• Have experience building and shipping production software systems
• Bring strong full-stack fundamentals across frontend, backend, services, and data
• Turn ambiguous, high-stakes problems into simple, reliable software
• Combine product instinct with systems judgment
• Care deeply about reliability, correctness, usability, and operational trust
• Enjoy working directly with users and stakeholders to understand real workflows
• Want to shape architecture and product direction, not just implement scoped features
• Are excited to use modern AI tooling to increase velocity while maintaining strong engineering rigor

Our Current Stack

• Go
• Python
• React
• gRPC
• Kafka
• PostgreSQL
• AWS
• Bazel
• Grafana
• Honeycomb

What Else You Need to Know

• The starting cash range for this role is $225,000 - $300,000
• 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.