Senior Mechanical Engineer
Zipline
Senior Mechanical Engineer
Zipline
Builds and runs autonomous drone delivery
Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products.
Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations.
Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.
We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.
You are a hands-on Senior Structural Engineer owning aircraft structural analysis, system level Global Finite Element Models (GFEMs), and assembly level Detailed Finite Element Models (DFEMs). At Zipline you will apply first-principles analysis and tight design-test-analysis loops to keep our delivery aircraft safe, light, and highly available for continuous logistics operations. Your work directly affects aircraft airworthiness, fleet uptime, and mission success—increasing vehicle life, decreasing maintenance intervals, root causing & preventing in-field failures, and enabling higher payloads and range for deliveries. This role reports into the Structural Analysis Lead and operates across design, test, reliability, systems, and field operations and is based at Zipline's manufacturing and test lab facility in South San Francisco. Travel to field sites and test ranges is typically 5-10% depending on program phase.
How to know if it's you: You’ve built your own prototypes to get quick answers, pencil and paper calculations are always your first step, you prefer simple and fast over detailed and large, you are on the floor during system testing, you have never presented a FEM plot without adjusting the legend scale . On any given day you could be building test articles in our composites/prototype labs, developing simple models to inform design trade studies, performing structural tests to validate analysis, working across disciplines to tackle complex system level challenges, root causing a test or field failure, or in the field supporting flight tests.
Zipline was founded by engineers dedicated to making the world a better place. We are building a new global industry and are looking for a talented engineer who takes a hands-on approach and will use analysis to drive design. The ideal candidate will be someone who excels in a fast paced, dynamic environment and is excited to own and drive simple, elegant solutions to complex problems.
The starting cash range for this role is $145,000 - $220,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.
Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.
We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!
For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.
As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.
Zipline builds and operates autonomous drone delivery networks for retailers, restaurants and healthcare systems that need to move products without road traffic. Its electric aircraft carry food, prescriptions and other supplies from partner sites or distribution hubs to customers and health facilities. The company combines aircraft, charging equipment and delivery software with flight operations, so partners buy a logistics service rather than manage their own drones. Merchants use its ordering and tracking tools to reach customers, while governments and health systems contract for medical supply delivery. Zipline was founded in 2014 and has its headquarters in South San Francisco, California.
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