Mechanical Engineer, Ground Systems
About The Position
Zipline is seeking an experienced Mechanical Engineer for its Ground Systems team. The team develops infrastructure that enables autonomous delivery aircraft to take off, fly, land, charge, and prepare for subsequent missions. Its systems must be modular, cost-effective, and adaptable to existing and new buildings and sites around the world. The engineer will own the design and end-to-end delivery of mechanical and electromechanical subsystems for next-generation products, from requirements and architecture through prototyping, verification, production ramp, and sustaining engineering. The work includes structural components, mechanisms, and electronics integration for safety-critical systems. The engineer will make design decisions, use analysis and prototype testing to iterate, and collaborate across engineering, production, supply chain, suppliers, and field operations to bring reliable, manufacturable products into service at scale. The role also includes technical leadership in design reviews and incident investigations, supplier qualification and production handoff, and mentoring other engineers. Periodic travel of less than 10% to customers and suppliers is expected.
Requirements
- 5–10+ years of mechanical or electromechanical design engineering experience delivering complex subsystems or products through NPI into production.
- Track record of owning complex subassemblies or full systems across at least two product programs, covering concept, prototype, validation, and production.
- Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals, including load estimation, structural hand calculations, FEA, material selection, clean CAD design, and design for assembly and field service.
- Experience designing mechanisms and actuator systems, including selecting and integrating motors, gearboxes, bearings, linear actuators, springs, linkages, sensors, and other motion-control components.
- Experience evaluating mechanism kinematics, actuator loads, friction, efficiency, backlash, compliance, duty cycle, wear, fatigue, and life.
- Practical knowledge of manufacturing methods such as welding, sheet-metal forming, extrusion, CNC machining, and injection molding.
- Experience partnering with contract manufacturers to ramp production of high-volume lines.
- Strong CAD and documentation skills, including ownership of 3D assemblies and 2D detail drawings for 20–100-part systems; experience with NX, SolidWorks, or equivalent.
- Disciplined engineering processes, including released parts, maintained BOMs, build SOPs, and up-to-date timelines.
- Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills, with the ability to tailor technical depth to the audience and use basic tools instead of full CAD when appropriate.
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related discipline.
- Ability to travel periodically, less than 10%, to visit customers and suppliers.
Nice To Haves
- NX as the primary CAD tool.
- Experience designing autonomous machinery, robotics, industrial automation, aerospace ground equipment, material-handling systems, or other electromechanical products.
- Experience developing custom actuators, drivetrains, latching systems, or compliant mechanisms.
Responsibilities
- Own mechanical and electromechanical subsystems from requirements definition and concept development through design, build, verification, release, production ramp, and sustaining engineering.
- Produce and defend system-level trade studies, tolerance stacks, load paths, failure-mode analyses, and hand calculations for safety-critical loads and manufacturability.
- Create CAD assemblies, detailed drawings, GD&T, and manufacturing documentation for assemblies of 20–100 parts; own design reviews, DFM, and first-article criteria.
- Develop and execute verification plans, including applicable environmental, fatigue, vibration, thermal, and EMI/EMC testing; build test rigs and fixtures, run test campaigns, analyze results, and close findings with corrective actions and reliability improvements.
- Lead supplier selection, qualification, and handoff; drive DFM feedback, define inspection criteria, reduce supplier NPI cycle time and scrap, and address supplier issues that risk field operations.
- Collaborate with Systems, Software, Production, Integration & Test, Reliability, and Field Ops to align requirements, manage trade-offs, and eliminate deployment blockers.
- Translate prototypes into designs that meet target cost, cycle time, and inspection rates for medium-volume production; own and improve manufacturability and in-field reliability metrics.
- Serve as a technical authority in design reviews and postmortems, and lead root-cause investigations of field incidents.
- Mentor peers and junior engineers and improve mechanical design practices across the team.
- Periodically travel, less than 10% of the time, to visit customers and suppliers.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Paid time off
- Equity compensation may be included in the total compensation package.
- Discretionary annual or performance bonuses may be included in the total compensation package.
- Sales incentives may be included in the total compensation package.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
