Senior Mechanical Engineer - Stress Analysis

Zipline • South San Francisco, CA

1d • $145,000 - $190,000

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, aiming to serve all humans equally by providing access to essential goods. The company designs, builds, and operates an autonomous logistics system, making deliveries globally. Zipline's system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and offers significant time savings. 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 on people's lives and scaling the future of logistics. The ideal candidate will be a hands-on engineer who uses analysis to drive design, excels in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, and is excited to own and drive simple, elegant solutions to complex problems that will help save lives every day.

This role is responsible for the structural design and analysis of aircraft primary structure from conceptual architecture through qualification testing. The engineer will own the durability and damage tolerance analysis of flight and ground structures, including setting and upholding analysis requirements, processes, and standards. This position will collaborate closely with structures and subsystems engineers to design and analyze fracture and fatigue tolerant structures and interfaces that operate in extreme environments for years without inspection or maintenance. The role also involves working closely with Reliability and Test Engineering to identify, investigate, and root cause failures discovered in testing and in the field.

Requirements

• Passion for and demonstrated history of solving complex engineering challenges
• Experience with durability and damage tolerance analysis of metallic, composite, and plastic structures
• Experience with industry standard analysis tools (Siemens NX, FEMAP/NX Nastran, AFGROW/ NASGRO, Siemens Simcenter, MATLAB)
• Vehicle/System level architecture analysis
• History of working with cross functional teams to solve complex engineering problems

Nice To Haves

• You’ve built your own prototypes to get quick answers
• pencil and paper calculations are always your first step
• you prefer simple and fast over detailed and large
• you are on the floor during system testing
• you have never presented a FEM plot without adjusting the legend scale
• On any given day you could be building test articles in our composites/prototype labs, developing simple models to inform design trade studies, performing structural tests to validate analysis, working across disciplines to tackle complex system level challenges, root causing a test or field failure, or in the field supporting flight tests.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate and optimize system (flight and ground) for structural loads, vibration modes, and deflections
• Perform analysis and sizing of airframe primary and secondary structure including static, dynamic, stability and damage tolerance analysis for metallic and non-metallic structures
• Classical stress analysis (Roark/Bruhn) to do initial sizing
• Dynamic analysis, including structural modes, random vibration, and forced harmonic vibration
• Drive design trades with data from lightweight FEMs (Beams/Shells) that can be rapidly updated (daily) to match evolving configurations
• Evaluate and optimize metallic, composite, and plastic structures (flight + ground) for resistance to fatigue and fracture
• Own and design elegant structural solutions for fracture critical components
• Define program DADT requirements and methodologies for developing and analyzing damage tolerant designs for composites, metallics, and plastics, including developing fatigue spectra for fracture critical components
• Quantify impact damage limits for metallic and composite structures
• Derive material property requirements and maximum allowable flaw size requirements for damage tolerant designs
• Assess and address nonconformances during manufacturing, testing, and field operations that may impact system DADT
• Build and document standardized in-house tools and processes to perform DADT analysis
• Identify and define when test correlation is required to validate simulation models including static, dynamic, and flight tests
• Produce pre-test predictions, instrumentation locations, and post test data analysis to tune model stiffness and stress results within 5% of test
• Rapidly resolve test issues (hours) and provide corrective action direction for issues found in qualification testing
• Work closely with design and test engineers to determine test requirements and support vehicle level tests

Benefits

• Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed