Hardware Reliability Engineer

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Zipline is building autonomous aircraft and ground infrastructure that must operate safely and reliably across demanding environments, high utilization, and long service lives with minimal maintenance. As an Electrical Hardware Reliability Engineer, you will bring your hands-on experience in RF, digital, analog, and/or power circuit problem-solving to identify and resolve our most complex electrical failures and improve overall hardware lifetime. You will own the reliability of critical electrical hardware such as our all-electric powertrain, charging systems, de-icing heater system, navigation sensor suite, or other electrical assemblies within our aircraft and ground systems. By combining design-for-reliability principles, rigorous test definition, and hands-on root cause analysis, you’ll play a critical role in ensuring Zipline aircraft and ground-based infrastructure meet the reliability standards that will enable Zipline to hyperscale. Depending on your experience and background, your scope may range from deep component-level reliability ownership to setting the reliability direction for an entire system.

Requirements

B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering or a related technical discipline.
A strong electrical engineering foundation and the ability to reason from first principles about hardware behavior and failure.
Hands-on experience developing and validating safety-critical electromechanical systems
Solid understanding of schematic design and PCB layout for analog, digital, RF, and power circuits.
Strong technical communication skills, including the ability to: explain complex technical issues clearly; synthesize ambiguous information into a coherent problem statement; write concise, decision-oriented technical documentation; and drive cross-functional alignment on reliability trade-offs and technical decisions around design, supply-chain, quality, manufacturing, finance, and operations.
Demonstrated ownership and practical problem-solving ability, including driving technically complex issues through resolution.
Ability to learn quickly, independently develop new technical depth, and adapt as program needs evolve.

Responsibilities

Own the reliability strategy for mission-critical electronic subsystems, applying board-level and system-level Design-for-Reliability (DfR) and Physics-of-Failure (PoF) principles.
Allocate and decompose system reliability requirements into actionable design-level specs.
Lead DFMEA efforts with cross-functional teams to identify early risks and drive mitigation.
Develop Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) and environmental test campaigns to validate long-term hardware performance.
Author test plans and procedures with clear, data-driven pass/fail criteria.
Lead failure analysis and structured root cause investigations, from component to system-level.
Sign off on test verification results and assess hardware readiness for flight from a reliability standpoint.
Define operational life limits and service intervals using a combination of test data, field returns, and statistical models.
Advocate cross-functionally for reliability: maintain an appropriately high reliability bar based on risk assessment and stage of program
Improve Zipline’s reliability methods, tools, standards, and decision-making processes as the company scales.