Senior Mechanical Test Engineer

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

16h•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 deliveries every 30 seconds across four continents, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. Zipline's customers include prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants, and global businesses who rely on them to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide rapid delivery. The company emphasizes that the drone is only 15% of their system, which strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back, with over 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown. They are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth, motivated by building systems with a direct, meaningful impact. The role involves quickly developing multiple iterations of systems to test novel components through the extreme environments demanded of aerospace applications. It requires designing tests for cross-functional interfaces with little information, full ownership, and responsibility. The work is intended for the field, with patients counting on it. Zipline is at the forefront of a logistics revolution, designing, manufacturing, and operating its own fleet of autonomous drones for rapid deliveries. They are hiring Mechanical Test Engineers across three different teams: Ground Systems, Structures & Mechanisms, and Powertrain & Battery. The hardware engineering organization is responsible for the design of all flight hardware and operations equipment, including Safety Systems, Primary Structure, Launcher, Recovery System, Battery Chargers, Power System, Network System, and countless other mechanisms critical to the function of the vehicle and ground systems. The goal is to create a product that can be deployed in hours, integrate seamlessly with customers, and operate without human intervention while being deployed worldwide at scale.

Requirements

Design for user experience of mechanical test systems. You can develop a machine that accomplishes complex interactions reliably and can be used by anyone with minimal training.
Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals. You understand the theory behind good design decisions and have a proven track record of executing these designs to make a test system that is more reliable than the product it is testing.
Cross functional team management experience such that you can balance the needs of structures, aero, embedded, and software engineering teams to create one product that works for all.
Understand when we can get away with a quick and dirty or scrappy solution and when it is worth our time and money to make investments in the future.
Must be eligible to work in the US
Must be able to work in person at Zipline’s South San Francisco headquarters

Responsibilities

Work with the product design and reliability teams to generate requirements for test systems that accurately capture the intended function of the vehicle while leaving the door open for future automation and high volume capacity.
Explore and define product edge cases based on data you collect from the field, existing logs, and in anticipation of future use cases and environments.
Design, build, and maintain critical test systems
Manage test systems for early stage designs. This will include ruthlessly prioritizing where our efforts must be spent to get the most out of every precious day.
Provide technical guidance to junior engineers and technicians.
Pivot often as we navigate uncertain regulatory space and learn more about what it will take to really wow our customers.