Perception Data Engineer

About Zipline

Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers.

The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.

About You and The Role  

Zipline is on a mission to revolutionize global access to essential supplies through our autonomous drone delivery network. We’re working hard to launch our next generation of autonomous aircraft, known as Platform 2, designed to provide a magical delivery experience for every package we place for a customer. 

We need to deliver to the incredibly diverse  and challenging geometries of backyards and porches, while navigating a variety of objects we encounter. From complex architectures to swaying trees, from tiny porches to a myriad of kid toys, our challenge is to build a robust autonomy system that puts the package down in a delightfully convenient and safe location every time.

To support this effort, we are seeking a skilled Software Engineer who will be instrumental in developing, maintaining and optimizing the tools and technologies that ensure the machine learning models in our perception systems are reliably and continuously improving with data. This role is crucial for maintaining the highest standards of performance and reliability in our autonomous systems, enabling them to adapt and thrive in diverse environments. Your work will ensure that our algorithms perform at their best, leveraging advanced techniques to validate and refine them in real-world conditions.

What You'Ll Do

• Build scalable software and data pipelines that accelerate ML model deployment across cities.
• Design frameworks for data curation and annotation to deliver high-quality datasets at scale.
• Partner with perception and data platform engineers to build the data flywheel linking system performance to data distribution.
• Maintain and advance computer vision algorithms to process incoming data and boost perception performance.
• Develop tools for data mining, leveraging techniques like embeddings and active learning.

What You'Ll Bring

• Experience maintaining data pipelines for machine learning systems in production environments
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure like AWS or GCP, and distributed systems for scaling data pipelines
• Proficiency in C++/Rust/Python
• A generalist mindset, excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Background in computer vision, autonomous systems or robotics preferred.
• Must be eligible to work in the US.

Why This Team?

• You’ll own real-world autonomy problems that matter—delivering essential goods around the world, in thousands of diverse backyards and environments.
• You’ll have autonomy and trust to define the roadmap and drive architectural decisions that shape Zipline’s global operations.
• You’ll work on cutting-edge problems with people who care deeply about quality, systems thinking, and solving hard problems with elegance and clarity.

A Few More Things

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and encourages candidates from historically underrepresented backgrounds to apply—even if you're not sure you're a perfect fit. If you care about shipping high-impact autonomy systems in production, we want to hear from you.

What Else You Need To Know

This will be a heavily cross-functional and in-office position, with a minimum of 4 days/week in South San Francisco. 

The starting cash range for this role is $160,000 - $225,000. 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. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!