Senior Electrical Engineer - Long Range Platform

Zipline • South San Francisco, CA

10h • Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. They design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries. The long-range drone platform, which began operations in Rwanda in 2016, features a fixed-wing design capable of flying over 200 km on a single charge, enabling fast, reliable delivery of critical medical supplies to remote communities. As a Senior Electrical Engineer on this program, you will lead the development, improvement, and hands-on testing of the aircraft’s core electronic systems, including motor controllers, power distribution units, battery management systems, safety circuits, and communication and networking interfaces. This role involves taking designs from architecture through prototyping, validation, and into production, working closely with mechanical, software, and manufacturing teams. It is a highly hands-on engineering role, requiring time in the lab for iterating on boards, running tests, and solving complex hardware problems. You will own electrical subsystems end-to-end, from architecture development and schematic design through bring-up, validation, production, and field support, focusing on meaningful subsystem improvements and enabling new capabilities within an existing airborne architecture. The role also involves developing hardware for the next-generation platform architecture, including designing electronics in fields such as Microprocessors, high-speed communication, GNSS, brushless DC motor drives, power supply, and battery.

Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or related field with a strong foundation in first principles engineering
• Minimum 4 years experience designing complex PCBAs, including: circuit analysis, schematic capture, PCB layout, packaging, integration, production, and board-level validation.
• Experience with at least some of the following areas: Mixed signal design and high speed design; Lithium Ion battery pack design– BMS, safety, power distribution, etc.; BLDC motor drives; Basic embedded communications busses (e.g. SPI, I2C, UART, CAN); Higher speed communications (e.g. Ethernet, LVDS).
• Enthusiasm for working in a fast-paced, hands on, collaborative, cross-functional environment.
• A desire to spend time in the engineering lab and experience with common lab equipment, such as an Oscilloscope, DMM, TDR, LCR, Network Analyzer, etc.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to explain technical challenges to both fellow engineers and non-engineers alike.
• Must be eligible to work in the US.
• Must be able to work at Zipline’s South San Francisco office.

Responsibilities

• Own the electrical design for volume production through a design cycle including requirements, prototype, schematic capture, layout, and validation.
• Make impactful design decisions daily, while working with a high level of independence.
• Lead trade studies, understand competing design priorities, and provide direction and clarity for burning down risk.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with reliability, mechanical, embedded, and systems engineers in all stages of development, including: Concept: System requirement, specification; Design: Schematic capture, PCB layout, system integration; Validation: Function and reliability test; Production: DFM, design drawings, manufacturing, EOL test, certification; Deployment: Troubleshoot field issues, develop rapid mitigations, roll learnings into future design revision.
• Travel occasionally to support supplier and manufacturer visit, product deployment, and field validation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees