Factory Scaling Engineer — Industrial & Operations

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an Industrial & Operations Engineer to own factory performance and scaling within the Manufacturing Engineering team. You will connect demand, labor, equipment, space, flow, and capital into an integrated production system, spending time on the floor to observe, analyze data, and drive changes across layouts, staffing, processes, and automation.

You will lead capacity modeling, bottleneck analysis, and takt-time definitions while partnering with cross-functional teams to

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or related field.
• 3+ years in industrial, manufacturing, or operations engineering or equivalent.
• Strong understanding of production system design and capacity planning.
• Experience with time studies, labor/capacity models, and line balancing.
• Ability to build and interpret financial and operational models for CapEx, automation, and scaling.

Responsibilities

• Own factory-level performance, scalability, and production-system design.
• Develop layouts, optimize workstation design, material flow, and labor movement.
• Lead time studies, cycle-time analysis, and labor modeling to improve efficiency.
• Build capacity models translating demand into labor, equipment, and shifts.
• Identify bottlenecks, drive changes to increase throughput and utilization.
• Define WIP, buffer, and rework strategies to protect output and lead time.
• Create scalable operating strategies for transition from prototype to high-rate production.
• Translate targets into factory requirements and scaling plans.
• Partner with teams to define takt time, staffing, and line architecture.
• Develop dashboards and decision tools for data-driven scaling decisions.

Skills

Industrial engineering

Manufacturing engineering

Operations engineering

Capacity planning

Line balancing

Takt time

Cycle time analysis

Data analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering

Tools

ERP

MES

SQL

Python

BI tools

Job description

Zipline is seeking an Industrial & Operations Engineer to own factory performance and scaling within the Manufacturing Engineering team. You will connect demand, labor, equipment, space, flow, and capital into an integrated production system, spending time on the floor to observe, analyze data, and drive changes across layouts, staffing, processes, and automation.

You will lead capacity modeling, bottleneck analysis, and takt-time definitions while partnering with cross-functional teams to