Head of Flight Test Engineering

Zipline • South San Francisco, CA

11h • Hybrid

About The Position

Zipline builds autonomous delivery systems that move critical goods through real-world logistics networks. Flight test provides the evidence that aircraft, software, delivery operations, docking and charging systems, and fleet capabilities are ready for commercial operations. As Head of Flight Test Engineering, you will lead the team that converts complex engineering questions into safe, representative release evidence. You will own flight test strategy and campaigns while strengthening the automation, data, and operating practices that help Zipline learn quickly and make rigorous release decisions. You are both a strong technical leader and a hands-on systems thinker. You should be excited to lead and grow a team while diving into test architecture, data, automation, risk assessment, and execution details. You should bring strong judgment about when to move quickly, when to invest in durable infrastructure and process, and how to balance engineering rigor with the pace required to support a rapidly evolving autonomous delivery system.

Requirements

• 5+ years designing, developing, validating, or testing complex autonomous, robotic, aerospace, aviation, or safety-critical systems; UAS experience is strongly preferred.
• Experience leading flight test, system test, validation, or field test engineering teams while staying 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.

Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and develop the Flight Test Engineering team.
• Own the 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed