Senior Electrical Engineer - Avionics

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

4h•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, making millions of deliveries globally, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. Zipline operates on four continents, making a delivery every 30 seconds, and has flown over 140 million commercial autonomous miles. They seek practical problem solvers motivated by building systems with direct, meaningful impact and scaling the future of logistics. The Senior Electrical Engineer will develop avionics for Zipline's next-generation aircraft, focusing on circuit board design and electronics development. This role involves designing electronics such as flight computers, communication systems, and safety systems for a new unmanned aerial system, aiming to expand Zipline’s impact from 100,000 to 100 million deliveries globally. The Avionics team designs robust systems for challenging environments, focusing on system architecture, performance, reliability, fault tolerance, mass, and cost, including FAA-approved safety systems. The role also involves building custom solutions with high-performance embedded computing and high-speed serial buses, ensuring robustness against environmental, ESD, and EMI threats. Zipline values personal development and encourages continuous learning and mentorship.

Requirements

A degree in Electrical Engineering, Embedded Hardware Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
Minimum 6 years of design experience including: circuit design, schematic capture, PCB layout, packaging, integration, cost reduction, sourcing and transitioning a product to production.
Past success developing electronics for critical systems in fields such as aerospace, transportation, or medical devices.
Design experience with mixed-signal, high-speed digital, SoM compute integration, high-speed serial busses, and electro-magnetic compatibility.
Enthusiasm for working in a fast-paced, collaborative, cross-functional environment.
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.

Nice To Haves

Experience working with any of DDR, CSI, PCIe, SPI, UART, USB is a preferred qualification.
Experience working with WiFi, Cell, GNSS, ADS-B, Cameras, Microphones is a preferred qualification.
Experience with electronics design of high volume consumer electronics products including mobile devices, laptops, and automotive is a preferred qualification.
Experience working on fail safe and fail operational electronics including aerospace and medical is a preferred qualification.

Responsibilities

Engineer avionics for volume production through a full design cycle including requirements, prototype, schematic capture, layout, and validation, with a focus on compute, sensing, and perception.
Shape the architecture of Zipline’s next generation product, making impactful design decisions daily, while working with a high level of independence.
Lead trade studies, understand competing design priorities, develop hardware requirements to meet system level requirements and provide direction and clarity for burning down risk.
Proactively seek out opportunities for improvement in system, vehicle, and component level design.
Collaborate cross-functionally in all stages of development, including: Architecture (fault tolerance, power, mass, thermals, perception performance), Detailed Design (schematic capture, PCB layout, system integration, validation), Production (quality, failure analysis, manufacturability, reliability, cost).