Systems Risk & Safety Lead
About The Position
We are looking for a System Risk & Safety Engineer to own and evolve the end‑to‑end risk and safety strategy for Zipline’s aircraft and operations. This is a senior technical leadership role with real authority: you will define what “acceptably safe” means for our systems, ensure we stay ahead of operational scale, and act as a steward of safety across engineering, operations, and the company as a whole. We start from the risk and the safety target, not from standards. Standards and guidance inform our work, but they do not define safety. This role requires first‑principles thinking, quantitative risk ownership, and the judgment to make difficult safety and risk decisions. This role is not advisory. You will own the quantitative safety case, drive top‑down safety analyses, and ensure learning from operations continuously feeds back into engineering priorities. Patients, partners, regulators, and the communities we serve rely on us to get this right.
Requirements
- BS and/or MS in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related field
- 8+ years of experience delivering safety‑critical electromechanical systems into real‑world operation
- Demonstrated ownership of system‑level safety analysis and decision‑making
- Strong first‑principles reasoning in the absence of complete regulations or industry guidance
- Experience with hazard analysis techniques such as fault trees, FMEA, and risk modeling
- Comfort engaging deeply with data, models, and operational evidence when needed
- Experience in cross-functional technical leadership of safety critical autonomous systems
Nice To Haves
- Experience working at the intersection of engineering design and live operations
- Exposure to regulator‑facing safety cases or certification efforts
- Experience scaling cross-functional Safety Management Systems
Responsibilities
- Own the quantitative safety case, including decomposition of top-level safety objectives into system requirements, allocations, and operational limitations
- Own top-down fault tree analysis for safety-related events and hazards, including budget allocation and margin tracking
- Ensure safety analyses remain valid as designs, operations, and scale evolve by monitoring current and emerging risks
- Ensure Zipline learns everything possible from test and commercial events, pulling corrective and preventive actions into engineering and operational priorities
- Grow and lead a small but mighty System Risk and Safety Engineering team
- Act as the technical owner for external safety communication, in partnership with certification, legal, and communications teams
- Proactively establish Zipline as an industry leader in safety transparency and trust
- Provide clear, technically grounded support for reactive communications in response to incidents
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
