Aviation Systems Engineer

Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

 

Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.

About You and The Role  

Do you love finding creative ways to solve time-sensitive, mission-critical technical and operational problems? The Aviation Sustainment Engineering (ASE) team is the first responder whenever our operations team encounters issues and are tasked with providing prompt, sound, customer-centric solutions to facilitate unblocking our operations team to perform critical deliveries. Furthermore, the ASE team is responsible for monitoring the in-field performance of our aircraft and ground equipment, identifying trending issues, supporting mitigation activities before identified issues significantly impact our operations, and providing insight to cross-functional stakeholders to enable targeted improvements to cost, reliability, and operational availability of our fleet. 

As an Aviation Sustainment Engineer, your job will be to ensure our operations team is always able to safely perform critical deliveries, especially as we continue to scale. This means not only being savvy in solving “today’s problems”, but also maintaining a high-level view and being proactive in identifying inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and other future operational challenges the company may face. In this role you will work hand-in-hand with our Field System Engineers and other Operational Support teams to ensure our Operations team can meet their daily demands without exception, while also providing critical insight to Design Engineers and other Systems Architects to inform future iterations of the system. If working in a highly cross-functional environment, solving complex problems and driving iterative improvements on novel technology appeal to you, you’ll thrive here. 

What You’ll Do  

• Become the go-to subject matter expert on troubleshooting and repairing flight systems -- you should be the first person our US operations teams call upon when they have a technical issue that is impacting critical deliveries
• Monitor in-service feedback and triage emergent technical and operational issues
• Maintain high level awareness of overall fleet performance and perform deep dives into our field data as appropriate to create intuitive visualizations, and present actionable insights to a variety of stakeholders
• Champion root cause analysis and containment actions; provide critical insights in support of corrective actions and preventive action (RCCA/PA) analysis
• Directly support development and upkeep of troubleshooting guides and other operational documentation that assists our operators in continuously serving their customers
• Lead meetings with flight operations and maintenance teams from various operating sites to discuss the top technical issues and share knowledge
• Foster strong relationships with other operations support teams including Logistics, Quality, Manufacturing, OEM Training and Field Systems Engineering to enable swift resolution of issues
• Provide critical operational context and feedback to our Design Engineering teams about the systems they own to facilitate rapid development of impactful improvements

What You’ll Bring

• You have a background in engineering, field service, maintenance (or similar field), with experience working with embedded systems; and can translate between operational needs and technical solutions in a variety of disciplines
• You have previous experience working in a regulated industry (such as aviation, nuclear, or health)  providing hands-on support diagnosing and troubleshooting complex systems
• You have a record of solving technical problems in a fast-paced environment
• You can communicate effectively (verbally and in writing) and have the ability to build and maintain strong working relationships with a variety of cross-functional stakeholders 
• You have the grit, resourcefulness, and resilience to thrive in novel, uncertain and constantly-changing business and regulatory environments
• You are able to perform basic data analysis in languages like Python, SQL or MATLAB 
• You are motivated by helping people and unblocking operations
• You are willing to work some nights/weekends and travel roughly 10-15% of the time
• Must be currently local or willing to relocate to Dallas, TX and expect meaningful travel outside of the Dallas area (within US) in the first six months

What Else You Need to Know