Hardware Test Engineer, Structures & Mechanisms

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

3d•$145,000 - $225,000•Onsite

About The Position

Zipline designs, builds, tests, and operates autonomous delivery aircraft that need to operate at scale in a huge variety of environments. Testing is central to our ability to validate and deliver hardware and directly affect flight safety, fleet reliability, manufacturability, and the speed at which we scale service to new regions. At Zipline, test engineers have high ownership in the definition of our test campaigns, the development of our test assets and capabilities, and execution across development, validation, and manufacturing end of line tests. As a Hardware Test Engineer on our Platform 2 Aircraft Structures & Mechanisms, you will own mechanical heavy test and validation for flight critical assemblies, mechanism performance, and system-level behaviors. You will develop the test methods, equipment, automation, and evidence needed to prove that the aircraft components meet its functional, safety, reliability, environmental, and lifetime requirements while balancing speed and rigor to ensure we have the best understanding of our hardware performance. This is a hands-on individual-contributor role spanning test strategy, fixture design, instrumentation, experimental execution, data analysis, and failure investigation. You will work closely with design engineers and provide critical feedback to improve designs while maintaining independent judgement about test adequacy, product risk, and release readiness. The best candidates are those who are comfortable as a full-stack mechanical engineer that can go broad or deep depending on the challenge at hand and is looking for real ownership and impact of their hardware.

Requirements

Proven ownership of high performance or low margin mechanical or electromechanical hardware validation through development, qualification, production ramp, and field deployment.
Deep hands-on experience designing and building mechanical test rigs, fixtures, instrumented assemblies, and automated cycle-test systems.
Strong mechanical fundamentals and comfort designing in CAD
Practical experience selecting, installing, calibrating, and troubleshooting sensors and data-acquisition systems.
Experience developing automated test and analysis tools using Python or an equivalent language.
Track record finding root causes for complex or intermittent failures and verifying that corrective actions prevent recurrence.
Ability to translate imperfect field data into representative laboratory tests and actionable engineering conclusions.
Experience working with design teams, suppliers, manufacturing, and technicians to execute test programs under aggressive schedules.
Clear written and verbal communication, including concise test plans, reproducible reports, and evidence-based readiness recommendations.

Responsibilities

Design, analyze, build, commission, and maintain custom test stands, fixtures, environmental setups, automated cycle rigs, and representative system test articles
Own end-to-end development and execution of validation campaigns of major structural and mechanism components from prototype through fleet deployment
Develop verification plans with clear coverage, traceability, sample sizes, margins and acceptance criteria to demonstrate structural strength, fatigue, mechanism performance, high-cycle life, wear, and much more over thousands of flights and years of duty.
Lead failure investigations from test or flight using physical inspection, teardown, dimensional measurements, logs, and instrumentation to drive failures to root cause and permanent corrective action
Work directly design, systems, and manufacturing partner teams to clearly communicate test asset functions, present test evidence, unresolved risks, and release recommendations.