Head of Flight Test Engineering

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

7d•$200,000 - $280,000

About The Position

Zipline is seeking a Head of Flight Test Engineering to lead the team responsible for producing safe, representative evidence that aircraft, software, delivery operations, docking and charging systems, and fleet capabilities are ready for commercial operations. The role owns flight test strategy and campaigns and strengthens the automation, data, and operating practices that support fast learning and rigorous release decisions. This is a technical leadership role combining team growth with hands-on systems thinking across test architecture, data, automation, risk assessment, and execution. The successful candidate will balance engineering rigor and durable infrastructure with the pace required by a rapidly evolving autonomous delivery system.

Requirements

At least 5 years designing, developing, validating, or testing complex autonomous, robotic, aerospace, aviation, or safety-critical systems.
Experience leading flight test, system test, validation, or field test engineering teams while remaining technically engaged.
Experience taking complex test campaigns from objective definition through planning, execution, analysis, and release recommendation.
Systems-level judgment across software, embedded, electrical, mechanical, controls, operations, and regulatory constraints.
Experience building or integrating test automation, analytics tooling, data pipelines, or scalable validation systems that improve coverage and efficiency.
Ability to lead cross-functional technical programs and communicate safety, risk, and engineering tradeoffs to engineers, operators, executives, and regulatory partners.
Comfort working in field environments with operational teams and willingness to travel domestically and internationally for flight testing, team leadership, and test-site support.

Nice To Haves

UAS experience is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead, grow, and develop the Flight Test Engineering team.
Own validation strategy for new aircraft capabilities, software releases, hardware changes, delivery operations, docking and charging systems, fleet behavior, and operational concepts.
Define campaign objectives, success criteria, risk posture, and go/no-go frameworks with Software, Electrical, Mechanical, Controls, Autonomy, Cloud, Systems, Product, and Regulatory teams.
Build and oversee flight test campaigns that produce clear release-readiness evidence and expand representative regression coverage across the end-to-end logistics system.
Improve automated test infrastructure, data pipelines, anomaly detection, reporting, and correctness metrics to increase repeatability, test velocity, test capacity, and decision quality.
Choose the appropriate validation modality—flight, simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, or ground testing—to focus flight testing on the highest-value learning.
Partner with Flight Test Operations on site readiness, execution processes, operational scalability, and support for testing in new geographies and environments.
Foster a strong safety culture across Flight Test Engineering and Operations, ensuring compliance with regulations and internal standards.