Software Release Program Manager Intern (Spring 2026)

About Zipline

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 the first instant logistics system that serves all humans equally. Leveraging expertise in robotics and autonomy, Zipline designs, builds, and operates a fleet of cutting edge, autonomous delivery drones. We serve tens of millions of people around the world.

Joining Zipline’s Emerging Talent program as an intern is an opportunity to contribute to our promise of building a system that provides equitable access to critical healthcare supplies for millions of people. We believe that internships are more than just opportunities to learn by watching or doing low level tasks. We expect our interns to take on meaningful work that actively contributes to moving Zipline’s mission forward, while learning real-world skills that will serve them in their careers for the long term. 

Join us, and build the future of logistics with the best humans around!

About The Software Validation Team

You’ll be joining the Software Validation Team. Our mission is to proactively surface regressions and uncover system-level risk before it impacts our products.

We act as a systems-level quality layer for software — verifying readiness across performance, behavior, and safety through structured testing, validation programs, and process ownership. Key products we own include: Flight Software Releases, key validation infrastructure, change control review, and configuration management

The Role

This role will play a critical part in strengthening the infrastructure and documentation that support the flight software release process. You will be responsible for identifying organizational gaps, gathering requirements, and improving the data infrastructure and dashboards that inform and gate releases.

By partnering closely with hardware, software, and operations teams, you will standardize and advance how release metrics are defined, tracked, and communicated across the company. This is a highly cross-functional role with broad visibility and impact, requiring both technical fluency and strong coordination skills.

What You'Ll Do

• Gather and align requirements across product, engineering, operations, and leadership teams to define the critical metrics that matter for cross-company visibility.
• Onboard onto a complex hardware–software platform, learning data flows, system dependencies, and integration points needed to extract accurate, reliable metrics.
• Design and build dashboards that unify data sources, ensure consistency, and present information in a way that supports decision-making at multiple organizational levels.
• Drive documentation and stakeholder alignment, creating clear specs that establish how metrics are defined, tracked, and used to inform future releases.
• Gate program and product launches with data by ensuring dashboards surface leading indicators, trends, and anomalies, enabling evidence-based “go/no-go” decisions.

What You'Ll Bring

• You are pursuing a degree in engineering or sciences with an emphasis in data sciences, data engineering, or engineering management
• Requirements gathering and metric definition – collaborating with stakeholders to define what to measure, why it matters, and how success is quantified.
• Data infrastructure fluency – ability to onboard quickly onto complex data systems and understand how information flows across them.
• SQL and query proficiency – retrieving, joining, and validating data across multiple sources to build accurate metrics.
• Dashboard and visualization expertise – designing clear, intuitive, and actionable dashboards.
• Strong cross-functional communication and documentation skills–  translating technical data concepts for non-technical audiences and aligning diverse teams around shared metrics as well as creating and maintaining clear standards for metric definitions, data sources, and dashboard usage.
• Risk and quality management – identifying data gaps, inconsistencies, or errors that could compromise release decisions, and building safeguards.
• Strategic insight and decision support – using data analysis and visualization to inform release gating, process improvements, and long-term standardization.

What Else You Should Know

Our internships are full-time positions, in-person at our South San Francisco or Dallas office. We will host our Spring 2026 interns from January to April. 

Candidates are limited to three (3) applications within a 30-day period.

The starting cash range for this internship is $30 - 44/ hour. 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, and working location. The total compensation package for each role may also include: a housing stipend; overtime pay; relocation support; paid sick time; and more. 

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.

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!

Zipline is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your point of contact at Zipline know if you require any accommodations throughout your interview process.