Head of System Modeling

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

5h•$190,000 - $230,000

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, dedicated to ensuring access to food, medicine, and essential goods anytime, anywhere. They design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, making millions of deliveries across four continents, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. Zipline's system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and provides rapid delivery, having safely flown over 140 million commercial autonomous miles. The company seeks practical problem solvers motivated by building systems with meaningful impact and scaling the future of logistics. The Systems Modeling Team at Zipline develops physics-based models to architect and optimize aircraft and supporting logistics systems. Through simulation, they rapidly explore design options for future products and enhance existing ones. This team integrates diverse engineering fields such as mechanical, aerodynamics, electromagnetics, electrical, battery chemistry, thermal, controls, fleet operations, and economics to generate new insights, translating technical discussions into rigorously framed engineering problems. As the Head of System Modeling, you will lead a team of high-caliber engineers applying analytical skills at both the product architectural and fleet operations levels. Your team's contributions will guide and accelerate key decisions throughout engineering development and scaling. A critical aspect of the role is to challenge assumptions and requirements, particularly those that drive significant cost and complexity. You will ensure high-quality insights by improving validation processes, cross-checking simulation results with independent calculations, safeguarding model inputs, and identifying areas where model assumptions lack strong data support. The team's core function is to build and maintain models that link product performance goals with hardware/software requirements, such as detailed aircraft models encompassing motors, inverters, propellers, wings, batteries, and controllers. You will investigate subsystem specifics, like propulsive motor design or battery chemistry selection, and address system-level questions regarding range-payload trade-offs or weather impacts. Additionally, your team will optimize the operational efficiency of the Zipline fleet, directly influencing customer outcomes by determining optimal aircraft numbers for service areas, maximizing deliveries, managing battery charging strategies, and analyzing how operational decisions affect customer-facing results.

Requirements

Demonstrated experience building mathematical models and modeling frameworks, across languages, methods, and tools.
Deep programming experience in Python, MATLAB, or Rust.
An understanding of numerical methods.
Strong convictions about the defining attributes of high-quality code tools.
Demonstrated experience integrating simulation tools across platforms and software languages.
A mastery of engineering and physics fundamentals: Energy and power, Dynamics (kinematics, forces, moments, acceleration/rotation), Fluids and aerodynamics, Heat transfer and thermodynamics.
Experience in fleet-level simulations and optimization (Range Modeling, Throughput Modeling, Network Modeling).
Fluency in system-level optimization.
An ability to distill an open-ended topic into a rigorously framed problem statement.
Familiarity with a variety of solution techniques, and the ability to identify an appropriate technique for a given problem.
Comfort with empiricism.
An ability to interpret complex datasets that span multiple physical realms.
Experience designing test campaigns for model validation.
Familiarity with practical considerations in embedded algorithm design.
Excellent communication skills, particularly in distilling multidimensional solution spaces into straightforward insights.
Demonstrated leadership attributes.
Awareness of the most critical needs of the company, and motivation to seek out unsolved problems.
Empathy and understanding for the people you work with.
10 years related industry experience.
BS in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or similar discipline.

Nice To Haves

MS strongly preferred

Responsibilities

Lead a team of high-caliber engineers applying analytical skills at both the product architectural and fleet operations level.
Guide and accelerate key decisions during many phases of engineering development and scaling.
Challenge assumptions and requirements, especially those which drive the most cost and complexity.
Relentlessly pursue high-quality insights by improving validation processes.
Check simulation results with independent hand calculations.
Safeguard model inputs.
Call out where model assumptions are weakly supported by data.
Build and maintain models that close the loop between product performance goals and hardware/software requirements.
Optimize the operational efficiency of the Zipline fleet, directly impacting customers.
Link operational decisions with customer-facing outcomes through model-driven analysis.
Drive progress on many projects at once, and to dynamically prioritize projects in a fast-evolving environment.
Make tough decisions in the face of imperfect information.
Adhere to thorough and well-organized documentation.
Patience to teach technical skills to others, while remaining open-minded to learning new skills yourself.