Hardware Test Engineer, Droid - Ground Systems

Zipline • South San Francisco, CA

1d

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, aiming to serve all humans equally by providing access to essential goods. They design, build, and operate an autonomous logistics system, making deliveries globally. The droid is a critical component, interacting with ground infrastructure. This role focuses on owning the ground testing for the next generation of droids and ground pickup stations (EV3) to ensure reliability at scale, with thousands of units in production and tens of thousands of flight cycles per unit. The position involves testing every fixture, life-test rig, environmental chamber, and automated bring-up station to prove the droid and zipping point work reliably together and exceed reliability targets. The successful candidate will join a small, cross-disciplinary hardware team.

Requirements

• BS or MS in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, or a related field.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience delivering electromechanical hardware or test software.
• Demonstrated ability to design mechanical hardware in a CAD environment (Siemens NX preferred).
• Comfort with the electrical side of test equipment, including reading schematics, wiring fixtures, debugging with a scope, and selecting sensors.
• Real Python experience, including writing test automation, data processing scripts, or bench-top control software.
• A systems approach to problem-solving, with the ability to identify failure domains (mechanics, electronics, firmware) and dive deep.
• Strong fabrication and prototyping skills, including comfort in a machine shop, with hand tools, and at a soldering station.
• Good judgment to differentiate between real test results and fixture-related issues.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with high-cycle mechanical life testing, environmental chambers, or accelerated life test design.
• Firmware experience (C, C++, Rust) on microcontrollers driving test equipment.
• PCB design experience for custom fixtures or breakout boards (Altium, KiCad).
• Prior work in drone, robotics, automotive, medical device, or consumer electronics NPI.
• Experience deploying test equipment to contract manufacturers and supporting production ramps.

Responsibilities

• Own the ground test strategy for the droid and its interaction with zipping point infrastructure, covering pickup/drop-off mechanics, tether engagement, and environmental exposure.
• Design, build, and deploy custom mechanical test fixtures and life-test rigs, managing the process from concept through fabrication, bring-up, and long-duration operation.
• Develop the electrical and instrumentation aspects of test systems, including load cells, thermocouples, encoders, current sensing, motor drivers, pneumatic actuators, DAQ, and safety interlocks.
• Write automation software for test systems using Python, including data logging, live health monitoring, automated pass/fail evaluation, and integration into the hardware test framework.
• Drive test campaigns from early prototype validation through qualification, life testing, and production end-of-line testing.
• Triage and root-cause failures across mechanical, electrical, and firmware domains, utilizing data, test heritage, and targeted campaigns.
• Partner with mechanical, electrical, firmware, and manufacturing engineers to push requirements based on physics and propose improvements based on testing.
• Occasionally travel to suppliers and manufacturing partners (China, Malaysia, Japan, Italy, Germany, Vietnam) to deploy test equipment, qualify processes, and support production ramps.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level