Flyzipline

Flyzipline

New Products Mechanical Design Engineer

South San Francisco, California, USA

Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 19 hours ago
PythonMATLABData AnalysisA/B TestingLogisticsSolidWorksFEAGD&TRoboticsMechanical DesignProblem Solving

About the role

  • About Zipline Zipline is the world's largest and most experienced drone delivery service.
  • 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.
  • The drone is only 15% of what we've built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations.

Responsibilities

  • Own end-to-end mechanical subsystem delivery for assigned scope (examples: wing/centerbody structure, landing/release mechanisms, payload bay interfaces, or actuation systems) from concept through production release and field deployment.
  • Translate mission requirements (mass budget, MTBF targets, operational duty cycles, environmental exposure, and turnaround time) into concrete designs, CAD, tolerance stacks, and verification plans.
  • coordinate part qualification, change control, and supplier handoffs to manufacturing partners.
  • Drive test campaigns: design test fixtures, lead lab and flight-test instrumentation, execute structural and mechanism validation, collect data, and close failure modes against defined acceptance criteria.
  • Use first-principles analysis and FEA to set margins, predict loads and fatigue life, and iterate designs to meet quantified targets (mass, stiffness, life, and safety factors).
  • Rapidly prototype and iterate in-shop: build assemblies, lead bench and environmental tests, and convert validated prototypes into producible designs with documented producibility improvements.
  • Collaborate daily with aerodynamics, structures, controls/autonomy, flight test, manufacturing, and operations teams
  • own cross-functional tradeoffs and be the mechanical authority in design reviews.
  • Deliver measurable outcomes: reduce subsystem mass within specified range, demonstrate target MTBF or cycle life in test, close validation test plans to signoff, and achieve on-time drawing release for production runs.
  • Produce and release drawings, GD&T, BOMs, and supplier specifications; coordinate part qualification, change control, and supplier handoffs to manufacturing partners.

Requirements

  • Whether your expertise is in composite structures, mechanisms, or both, you combine strong engineering fundamentals with a hands-on approach to rapidly turn ideas into reliable hardware.
  • You are comfortable moving between concept generation, analysis, CAD, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing, always balancing performance, weight, reliability, manufacturability, cost, and schedule.
  • You have a track record of solving difficult engineering problems through first-principles thinking, rapid experimentation, and sound technical judgment.

Nice to have

  • Patents, commercialized products, or exceptional personal engineering projects demonstrating creativity and craftsmanship.
  • Constraints: This posting preserves the role scope and seniority
  • Zipline may sponsor work authorization where applicable.
  • What Else You Need To Know
  • 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!
  • Nice to have: Patents, commercialized products, or exceptional personal engineering projects demonstrating creativity and craftsmanship.

Visa & Work Authorization

  • Constraints: This posting preserves the role scope and seniority; Zipline may sponsor work authorization where applicable.
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This listing is sourced directly from Flyzipline's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.