Enterprise Systems Software Engineer Intern, Zipline
Summer 2027
The hourly rate for this internship is $54 per hour
3-5 days a week in office
Transforming the way goods move
Be an early applicant
Transforming the way goods move
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
The hourly rate for this internship is $54 per hour
3-5 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To build the world's first logistics system that serves all people equally.
Role
Who you are
- You must have completed the second year of your undergraduate studies in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field. Masters and PhD students are also eligible
- Product-minded engineering. You excel at understanding user needs, identifying root causes, and designing pragmatic solutions that balance business value with technical simplicity
- Systems perspective. You break down ambiguous operational problems, collaborate with stakeholders to define the right solution, and deliver software that improves real-world processes
- Strong technical fundamentals. You design maintainable systems, model data thoughtfully, make sound technical tradeoffs, and use AI effectively to accelerate development while maintaining high quality
- Modern technology stack. You'll work across Python, Go, PostgreSQL, React, Kafka, gRPC, AWS, Grafana, and Honeycomb, using AI throughout the development lifecycle for design, implementation, testing, debugging, and code review. We value engineers who learn new tools quickly over experience with any specific technology
- Operational excellence. You define meaningful service health metrics and reliability goals, create operational runbooks, participate in on-call rotations, and drive improvements through incident reviews
- Quantifiable results. You have a track record of shipping high-impact features that reduce manual intervention and boost throughput, backed by concrete metrics like downtime reduction or significant time savings
- Collaboration and discovery. This role requires regular on-site presence at our engineering or operations hubs to partner with cross-functional teams. When local, expect 5 days per week in-office, on the manufacturing floor, or at a test/commercial operations site. You are open to traveling up to 15% annually to be in close proximity to users and stakeholders
- Owner’s mindset. You are a decisive engineer who balances velocity with absolute correctness. You understand the direct operational consequences of your code in a safety-critical, hardware-integrated environment
What the job involves
- Joining Zipline as a Software Engineer Intern on the Enterprise Systems team, you will be part of the Application Software organization
- You will take full ownership of the operational nervous system that powers everything from manufacturing and supply chain to inventory traceability and field deployment
- This software is the critical infrastructure used daily by our technicians, planners, and manufacturing teams to ensure global production reliability
- You will work directly with hardware and operations partners to lead technical designs and deploy high-availability services where correctness is vital for safety and aircraft throughput
- Drive core product domains. You will be the primary architect and owner for critical systems driving Manufacturing Execution, Supply Chain, Finance, Parts Traceability, and Inventory, ensuring their long-term technical health and strategic direction
- Deliver measurable impact. Within your first year, you will stabilize essential services to 99.9% uptime, slash manual planning and production interventions by over 50%, and deploy a comprehensive traceability pipeline that tracks the vast majority of our manufactured assets
- Lead technical design. You’ll define the APIs, data models, and service boundaries that power our operations, while prioritizing observability through metrics, SLAs, and robust runbooks
- Bridge hardware and software. You will build resilient integrations between our digital services and physical hardware tooling, driving direct handoffs and ensuring our systems remain deterministic even during intermittent network connectivity
- Own production excellence. Engineers participate in an on-call rotation to maintain high-availability services, leading incident response and driving continuous improvement through deep-dive postmortems
- Embedded discovery. You’ll work directly on the shop floor with manufacturing, supply chain, and flight ops teams to prototype workflows and drive the adoption of new operational tools
- Elevate the team. You will mentor peers and refine our CI/CD and automated testing practices to ensure that deployments remain safe and repeatable in our unique hardware-integrated environment
- Assuming this position, you will take full ownership of a mission-critical operational nervous system from day one. Your mandate involves delivering quantifiable results in system reliability and aircraft throughput within your first year, while managing SLO-driven services in close partnership with our physical hardware and field operations teams
- This internship is a full-time position, in-person at our South San Francisco office. We will host our Summer 2027 interns from (May/June - August/September)
Our take
Zipline is reinventing how the world moves goods - one flight at a time. What started as a bold idea to deliver life-saving medical supplies by drones has grown into the world's first logistics network designed to serve everyone, everywhere. From rushing blood and vaccines to remote clinics, to dropping off everyday essentials for Walmart customers, Zipline's autonomous drones are proving that fast, reliable delivery doesn't have to be limited by roads or geography.
Zipline has an edge over potential future competitors, as the company has thousands of hours and over 35 million miles of flight to prove the system is safe and effective. It’s also one of the first companies to receive a full commercial operating certificate, putting Zipline in a strong position to continuously branch out to other markets.
The unicorn company operates globally and has signed its first government contract with Rwanda to provide up to 2 million drone deliveries by 2029. Beyond government partnerships, Zipline has its sights set on everyday consumers, preparing to launch commercial deliveries straight to individuals' houses. With its Walmart collaboration expanding and even Chipotle orders taking to the skies in Texas, Zipline isn't just redefining delivery - it's aiming to reach every corner of commerce, with a future that looks as bright as its ambitions.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
34% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 12 rounds)
Mar 2026
$200m
SERIES H
Jan 2026
$600m
SERIES H
Total funding: $2.1bn
Company HQ
South San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Keller Rinaudo Cliffton
(Co-Founder & CEO)Having studied Economics and Biotechnology at Harvard, they worked for almost 11 months as a self-employed rock climber. They combined their academic and practical experience to co-found Zipline in July 2011.
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