Senior Motor Test Engineer - Powertrain

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Zipline’s aircraft rely on electric propulsion and actuation hardware that performs predictably in demanding conditions. As a Senior Motor Test Engineer, you will build the evidence behind that confidence by characterizing motors, propulsion systems, actuators, and propeller subassemblies in the lab and connecting results to flight and field performance. You will own performance and reliability test campaigns from specification through technical recommendation. Your work will inform design release, vehicle readiness, field reliability, model validation, and production-test decisions.

Requirements

Hands-on experience with electric motors and actuators, including efficiency characterization, losses evaluation, testing to evaluate electrical and thermal models.
Hands-on experience with actuator performance and control system evaluation.
Hands-on experience with structural and dynamics performance, including material testing, dynamic response, accelerometer and strain instrumentation.
Experience building or improving test fixtures, dynamometers, thrust stands, instrumentation, or automated data-acquisition systems.
Proficiency in Python or equivalent.
Sound engineering judgment to connect test results to design decisions, model validation, reliability risks, and field performance.
Experience working across hardware design and manufacturing teams to translate test evidence into practical product and production changes.

Responsibilities

Conduct full electromechanical characterization of BLDC motors including loss characterization, thermal coefficient extraction, and demagnetization testing
Evaluate propulsion systems (motor + inverter + propeller) for thrust, efficiency, and thermal behavior across the full operational envelope
Test servo and motor-based actuators for positional accuracy, losses, holding torque, and closed-loop dynamic response
Define and own test specifications covering efficiency maps, thermal performance, torque-speed curves, cogging, back-EMF, and endurance
Perform root cause analysis on field failures and correlate back to test data to close the loop between lab and flight
Own the full performance and reliability test campaign for your hardware - you are the go-to person to understand how a part will perform in the field, and when the hardware is pushed to its limits.
Characterize wear-out mechanisms for complex actuator and propeller subassemblies, subject to billions of damage cycles per lifetime.
Develop novel ways for validating motor and structural models and FEA validation.
Partner with mechanical, electrical, and firmware engineers to translate design intent into rigorous test requirements
Work with manufacturing to develop production test strategies that balance coverage, throughput, and cost
Develop automated test scripts and data acquisition pipelines (Python, or equivalent)