Senior Electrical Engineer - Long Range Platform

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

1d•$160,000 - $235,000•Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, focused on serving all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine, and essential goods. The company designs, builds, and operates an autonomous logistics system for critical supply delivery. Zipline operates on four continents, making deliveries rapidly and reliably, with millions of deliveries completed to date. Their system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and saves people time. The company is seeking practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth, motivated by building systems with a direct, meaningful impact. This role is within the long-range drone platform engineering team, responsible for designing the aircraft and ground systems for launch and recovery. The platform is 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. The electrical engineer will design real hardware that flies, operates in demanding environments, and scales globally. The position involves owning electrical subsystems end-to-end, from architecture development and schematic design through bring-up, validation, production, and field support. The engineer will work within an existing airborne architecture, improving subsystems and enabling new capabilities while maintaining the stability of a live production system. This role will also contribute to the next-generation platform architecture by designing electronics in areas such as Microprocessors, high-speed communication, GNSS, brushless DC motor drives, power supply, and batteries. Collaboration with firmware, mechanical, systems, manufacturing, and operations teams is essential to deliver hardware that balances practical constraints with elegant solutions.

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), and Deployment (Troubleshoot field issues, develop rapid mitigations, roll learnings into future design revision).
Travel occasionally to support supplier and manufacturer visits, product deployment, and field validation.