Senior Software Engineer - Maps Platform

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

Zipline

Compensation

$170,000 - $210,000/year

South San Francisco, California, USA

On-site

Posted April 23, 2026

Job Description

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.

Why this role matters

We’re building the mapping infrastructure that powers every Zipline flight. Maps Platform engineers build the backbone that serves geographic data, features, and map-driven services to Zipline’s products and operators.

You’ll make map data fast, accurate, and reliable for both human workflows (map editors, operator dashboards, regulatory UIs) and autonomous systems (routing, onboard systems). This role mixes backend, data, platform engineering and user interface design with pragmatic production ownership.

Why this role is unique

Own the foundation of flight intelligence. The systems you build directly power how aircraft understand and navigate the world.
Massive data challenges. You’ll design pipelines that process and serve large-scale geospatial datasets with strict requirements for accuracy, consistency, and availability.
End-to-end ownership. From raw data ingestion to production services, you’ll build systems that are critical to real-world operations.
Cross-functional impact. Your work will be used across autonomy, routing, simulation, and operations.
AI-accelerated engineering. We leverage modern AI and agentic workflows to increase engineering velocity while maintaining strong system rigor.

What you’ll bring

We care far more about how you approach problems than experience with any specific technology. Strong candidates typically have:

Experience building and operating large-scale data pipelines
A track record shipping reliable services and APIs
Extreme ownership mindset with the ability to drive projects end-to-end
Experience working with large datasets and designing reliable data processing logic
Familiarity with data modeling, data quality, and validation in production systems
Comfort working with cross-functional teams and integrating systems across domains
Strong backend or distributed systems engineering fundamentals
Experience with geospatial systems, mapping technologies, or GIS tooling is a plus, but not required.

Our current stack includes technologies such as Go, Python, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, 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 are excited to work with engineers who use modern tools to amplify productivity while maintaining high standards for system design and data quality.