---
title: 'Perception Intern (Summer 2027) at Zipline'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/perception-intern-summer-2027-zipline-south-san-francisco-california-1svyxyfewz91'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Perception Intern (Summer 2027) at Zipline 

- **Company:** Zipline 
- **Location:** South San Francisco California, United States
- **Posted:** 2026-08-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://www.zipline.com/open-roles/7909570003?gh_jid=7909570003

## 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.

## About the Droid Perception Team

The Droid Perception team owns both the onboard perception system that operates in a constrained compute regime on the drone and the offboard perception system that is built to augment, validate and improve the onboard system. Both onboard and offboard perception systems are camera-only systems that do not use LiDAR. The team’s work involves:

- Creating robust pipelines to process large datasets to train various models
- Training cutting-edge machine learning models of various types and sizes that understand the 3D structure as well as the semantics and enable us to make safe deliveries at scale
- Writing clean, high-quality code to train models to utilize GPUs efficiently
- Building autonomous systems that run on the drone as well as in the cloud that use the machine learning models to power Zipline’s P2 platform
- Optimizing the onboard models into TensorRT engines to deliver high throughput within a limited compute budget
- Understanding the failure modes of the onboard and offboard perception systems and designing solutions to solve them
- Interfacing with the planning, navigation, maps, and hardware teams to understand each other’s needs and design systems accordingly

## The Role

As an intern in the Droid Perception team, you will dive into ML model experimentation, evaluation and integration to push the boundaries of our current onboard and offboard perception systems.

Our distinctive challenges require groundbreaking approaches, and you'll have the chance to see your ideas transition from concept to real-world application. In a fast-paced and collaborative environment, you'll look at current research in the field and use that to propose novel solutions to our pressing perception challenges.

Join us, and be at the frontier of shaping the future of autonomous deliveries!

## What You'll Do

- Ideate, experiment and iterate on learning-based solutions for unique perception challenges
- Collaborate closely with team members, brainstorming and deriving creative solutions from first principles
- Leverage large datasets from heterogeneous sources (real-world, simulation, and internet-scale data) to train machine learning models
- Ship production code to train, validate and integrate models into the perception system
- Share findings and insights, fostering knowledge exchange across teams

## What You'll Bring

- You must have completed the second year of your undergraduate studies. Master’s and PhD students are also eligible
- Good theoretical understanding of 3D computer vision and various camera models
- Hands-on expertise in and in-depth understanding of one or more of the following areas: multi-view depth estimation, semantic segmentation, Gaussian splatting, generative modeling, BEV-style models, VLAs, VLMs, model optimization
- Deep understanding of state-of-the-art research and trends in one or more of the following areas: multi-view depth estimation, semantic segmentation, Gaussian splatting, generative modeling, BEV-style models, VLAs, VLMs, model optimization
- Proficiency with deep learning frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow
- Experience writing high-quality code in a production environment, e.g., at a previous internship
- Ability to rapidly experiment, iterate, and adapt to new findings in a dynamic environment

What Else You Should Know

Our internships are full-time positions, in-person at our South San Francisco office. We will host our Summer 2027 interns from this summer (May/June - August/September).

The hourly rate for this internship is $50 per hour. Additional benefits may include relocation support, a housing stipend, overtime pay, paid sick time, and other benefits, where applicable and subject to local requirements.

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.

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. Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

## About Zipline 

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zipline is an American robotics company that operates the world’s largest autonomous drone delivery service, transporting medical supplies, food, and retail goods across multiple continents.
- **Entity Type**: Private (early-stage startup)
- **Headquarters**: South San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: March 2014
- **Founders**: Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oksenhorn, William Hetzler

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Logistics / Drone delivery
- **Target customers**: B2B (healthcare systems, governments, retailers like Walmart and Chipotle) and B2C (home delivery via the Zipline app)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Build the first logistics system that serves all people equally” – initially focused on saving lives by delivering blood and medicine to remote communities, now expanded to instant urban delivery.

## Products & Services
- **Platform 1 (P1)**: Long-range, rural delivery drone. Carries up to 4 lbs, roundtrip range 120+ miles, cruise speed 60 mph. Uses parachute delivery. Designed for enterprise, government, and healthcare supply chains.
- **Platform 2 (P2)**: Urban/suburban home delivery drone. Carries up to 8 lbs, service radius 10 miles (or 24 miles one way), cruise speed 70 mph. Delivers via a tether from up to 300 ft, allowing contactless drop-off. Launched in 2025 and used for food, retail, and health products.
- **Zipping Points**: Modular ground stations that allow businesses to load orders onto drones without specialized equipment.
- **FlightIQ**: Advanced onboard autonomy and perception suite for safe navigation and delivery.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: 2 million commercial deliveries completed (as of January 2026) and 130 million autonomous miles flown.[wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company))[zipline-fact-sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in available sources. Key partners include Walmart, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Crumbl, Blaze Pizza, Wendy’s, and many other restaurant brands. In healthcare, works with more than 5,000 hospitals and health centers.
- **Growth Signals**: Expanded into urban home delivery in 2025 (P2) with service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas and 20+ communities in Dallas-Fort Worth. Obtained FAA authorization for beyond visual line of sight operations. Reports 56% decrease in maternal mortality and 66% decrease in missed malaria treatments in served regions.[zipline-fact-sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Autonomous drone fleet**: One of the world’s largest commercial deployments of autonomous robots, with custom software running on Nvidia chips.
- **FAA approval**: All operations and aircraft are FAA-approved, including pioneering use of Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM).
- **Quieter than road vehicles**: Drones hover high and descend on a tether, generating noise lower than common neighborhood sounds.
- **Extensive testing**: One of the largest aviation testing campaigns, with operations in rain, wind, and storms.
- **Integrated logistics platform**: Beyond drones, Zipline provides warehousing, inventory management, cold chain storage, and fulfillment software.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the Platform 2 urban delivery network across the U.S., particularly through partnerships with major retailers and restaurants.
- Deepening healthcare impact by expanding into new countries and product categories (prescriptions, groceries, convenience items).
- Continuing to reduce delivery times and environmental footprint (0 emissions per delivery, compared to automotive delivery).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture values**: Ownership & Accountability, Direct Feedback & Communication, Continuous Improvement, Customer Obsession, Servant Leadership (as stated on careers page). Emphasis on “Make it matter” and mission-driven work.[careers](https://www.zipline.com/careers)
- **Work environment**: Headquartered in South San Francisco with hardware and software teams. The company assembles its drones in America. Likely on-site given the hardware focus; remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated.
- **Impact**: Opportunity to work on life-saving technology (60,000+ lives saved) and shape the future of instant logistics.
- **Engineering culture**: Build and iterate on autonomous systems, airspace deconfliction, and large-scale robotics deployments.

## Sources
1. [Zipline Careers](https://www.zipline.com/careers)
2. [Zipline Homepage](https://www.zipline.com/)
3. [About Zipline](https://www.zipline.com/about)
4. [Zipline Fact Sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)
5. [Wikipedia - Zipline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company))
6. [Greenhouse Careers Page](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/flyzipline)

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