Senior Software Engineer - Datacenter Automation

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 Zipline Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced autonomous delivery service, founded to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to 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 including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and commercial products. Our customers include healthcare systems, governments, retailers, and global brands who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide new logistics services at scale. Our technology goes beyond drones. We deploy integrated logistics infrastructure that strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and enables instant delivery, transforming how essential goods reach people everywhere. 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. About You and The Role Zipline’s software team delivers safety-critical software at lightning speed. A small team of engineers builds and maintains the datacenter and automation systems that power our global operations. In this role, you will be responsible for the full lifecycle of our datacenter stack—from bare metal provisioning and hypervisor management to Kubernetes clusters and infrastructure automation. You’ll be hands-on, ensuring reliability, scalability, and efficiency of our compute and storage systems, while collaborating with other engineers to define best practices, improve tooling, and support the systems that keep development and operations running smoothly. At times your work will be high-level, shaping technical direction or identifying the right automation tools and standards to adopt. At other times, you’ll be deep in the details—racking and stacking, tuning clusters, debugging infrastructure issues, or automating deployments. Above all, you’ll be a trusted partner to engineers across the org, building resilient systems that accelerate Zipline’s mission. What You'll Do Own and evolve Zipline’s datacenter infrastructure stack: compute, storage, networking, and Kubernetes Automate provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management for bare metal and virtualized systems Deploy, maintain, and scale hypervisors, storage clusters, and containerized workloads Partner with engineers across the org to deliver reliable, automated infrastructure that meets diverse requirements Build and maintain automation workflows, dashboards, and tools to streamline datacenter operations Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues across hardware, virtualization, and orchestration layers What You'll Bring 8+ years of experience in a software development role at engineering-led companies Hands-on experience across datacenter operations: rack & stack, networking, bare metal provisioning, hypervisors, storage clusters, Kubernetes, and infrastructure automation A generalist mindset — broad knowledge, curiosity, and breadth of experiences Excitement about enabling other engineers: you thrive on building reliable systems and collaborating across teams Ability to develop, document, and enforce best practices in infrastructure operations What Else You Need to Know This role is an in-office opportunity based out of our South San Francisco HQ. The starting cash range for this role is $170,000-210,000. 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; 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!