Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Dropbox

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

4h•$170,000 - $255,000•Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is hiring a Senior or Staff Electrical Engineer for Dropbox, its customer-facing package-loading product. Dropbox integrates mechatronics, sensors, electronics, access control, user interaction, firmware, and environmental protection to let untrained users hand off packages to Zipline’s delivery droids. The engineer will own critical electrical systems from architecture and component selection through detailed design, validation, production ramp, and fleet operation. Scope includes power distribution, motor and actuator interfaces, sensing, PCBAs, wiring harnesses, connectors, grounding, protection, communications, and system diagnostics. The electrical systems must operate safely and reliably while unattended in demanding field environments, tolerating weather, installation variation, power disturbances, mechanical motion, contamination, service activity, and repeated daily operation. This is a hands-on individual-contributor role that combines detailed electrical design with system-level product outcomes. The engineer will collaborate with Mechanical Engineering, Firmware, Systems, Safety, Test, Reliability, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Deployment, and Operations. At Staff level, the role also sets electrical architecture and technical direction across Dropbox generations, establishes reusable design standards, and leads complex cross-functional problem-solving. The position is in person in South San Francisco and involves some travel to suppliers, manufacturers, test locations, and deployment sites as needed. Periodic off-hours support may be required during critical builds, test campaigns, production ramps, and field escalations.

Requirements

Proven end-to-end ownership of complex electrical or electromechanical products through architecture, validation, production ramp, and field deployment.
Strong electrical engineering fundamentals across analog, digital, power, sensors, motor interfaces, embedded systems, and communications.
Experience designing electronics for systems containing motors, actuators, sensors, PCBAs, harnesses, connectors, and embedded controls.
Demonstrated ability to develop robust power-distribution, grounding, shielding, protection, and interconnect architectures.
Experience with schematic capture, PCB design reviews, component selection, tolerance analysis, and worst-case circuit analysis.
Hands-on proficiency with oscilloscopes, multimeters, power analyzers, electronic loads, logic analyzers, current probes, and data-acquisition equipment.
Experience debugging intermittent problems involving power, signal integrity, connectors, sensors, communications, or firmware interaction.
Experience designing for outdoor, industrial, automotive, aerospace, robotics, appliance, or similarly demanding environments.
Knowledge of environmental protection, thermal derating, ESD, EMI/EMC, ingress, corrosion, vibration, and connector reliability.
Experience defining verification plans, fault-injection tests, and production acceptance criteria.
Track record working directly with PCB, harness, component, and contract-manufacturing suppliers.
Experience implementing DFM, DFT, end-of-line testing, calibration, and manufacturing controls.
Ability to analyze telemetry or test data using Python, SQL, MATLAB, or equivalent tools.
Strong systems judgment and ability to recognize when an electrical symptom originates in mechanical hardware, firmware, configuration, or field conditions.
Clear written, verbal, and visual communication, including concise documentation of architecture decisions, assumptions, interfaces, and risks.
Strong technical judgment, hands-on curiosity, disciplined documentation, comfort with ambiguity, and persistence until difficult failures are understood.

Nice To Haves

Experience with motor-control electronics, position sensing, safety interlocks, or automated mechanisms.
Experience with batteries, solar power, or distributed low-voltage systems.
Experience with functional-safety principles or electronics operating around untrained users.
Experience developing remote diagnostics, fleet-health monitoring, or automated failure-detection tools.
Firmware experience in C/C++ or experience debugging embedded systems at the hardware-software boundary.
Experience with high-volume electromechanical products.

Responsibilities

Own critical Dropbox electrical systems from requirements and architecture through production release and field deployment.
Develop electrical architecture for power distribution, control electronics, sensors, actuators, user interfaces, communications, and service diagnostics.
Translate product behavior, safety analyses, environmental conditions, mechanical interfaces, and field workflows into electrical requirements.
Define electrical success metrics, including power consumption, sensing coverage, fault-detection performance, environmental margin, production yield, and field reliability.
Select and integrate sensors, motors, actuators, motor drivers, power supplies, converters, protection devices, connectors, harnesses, and communications interfaces.
Design or guide development of PCBAs, schematics, layouts, cables, wiring harnesses, interconnects, and electrical assembly documentation.
Own power budgets, grounding and shielding strategy, connector architecture, current-carrying margins, thermal derating, and protection coordination.
Design for electrical faults, including overcurrent, short circuit, reverse polarity, overvoltage, undervoltage, brownouts, electrostatic discharge, connection errors, and loss of communication.
Partner with Safety and Systems engineers to control electrical hazards through architecture, isolation, protection, sensing, and fault response.
Work with Mechanical Engineering on electronics packaging, cable routing, connector access, environmental sealing, thermal management, strain relief, and serviceability.
Partner with Firmware engineers to define sensor behavior, actuator interfaces, motor control, state transitions, interlocks, fault detection, telemetry, and recovery.
Ensure electrical interfaces and configuration are unambiguous across product variants, site installations, and manufacturing builds.
Perform circuit, power, signal-integrity, tolerance, derating, and worst-case analyses.
Build prototypes, instrument systems, perform bench testing, and use data to retire technical risk.
Develop validation plans covering functional performance, power quality, electrical safety, environmental exposure, ingress, thermal cycling, vibration, ESD, EMI/EMC, cable flexing, connector life, and fault injection.
Lead design reviews, DFMEAs, hazard reviews, and electrical readiness reviews.
Produce schematics, drawings, specifications, interface-control documents, BOMs, test requirements, and release documentation.
Work directly with suppliers to qualify components, PCBAs, harnesses, connectors, power systems, and manufacturing processes.
Partner with NPI, Manufacturing, and Quality to develop scalable assembly, inspection, programming, calibration, and end-of-line test processes.
Support prototype builds, engineering validation, design validation, production validation, and manufacturing ramp.
Lead investigations of test, production, and field failures using telemetry, logs, electrical measurements, physical inspection, and structured root-cause methods.
Drive issues from containment through corrective action and verify that fixes measurably reduce recurrence.
Use fleet data and service records to improve electrical reliability, fault detection, diagnostics, and maintenance procedures.
Mentor engineers and establish electrical design, documentation, review, and release best practices.
At Staff level, identify systemic technical risks, drive cross-generational architecture decisions, and align electrical, mechanical, firmware, test, and manufacturing strategies.