Head of Systems Engineering

Namely; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a senior systems engineering leader to define product capabilities roadmaps and decompose them into concrete architectures. You will validate and verify capabilities across current platforms and novel autonomous aircraft concepts, leading a team toward scalable, safe operations.

You will drive cross‑functional discussions, develop frameworks for trade studies, and create system models while partnering with safety and regulatory teams to prove flight worthiness.

Qualifications

• Proven leadership delivering complex technical solutions.
• Strong systems engineering experience on safety-critical autonomous systems.
• Experience in product requirements, architecture, interfaces, verification planning.

Responsibilities

• Define product-level requirements, architecture, decomposition, verification plans and metrics.
• Own system-level architecture, interfaces, and test coverage for high-reliability autonomous systems.
• Lead cross-disciplinary discussions to align architectures and roadmaps.
• Develop trade studies to optimize performance, safety, and cost.
• Set hardware/software release standards and collaborative safety cases with regulators.

Skills

Leadership

Systems engineering

Autonomous systems

Cross-functional collaboration

Modeling & diagrams

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Tools

SysML

Requirements mgmt tools

Job description

About Zipline

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.

About You and The Role

You will lead the systems engineering team responsible for defining the product capabilities roadmap, decomposing those capabilities into concrete architectures engineering teams can deliver on, and system validation & verification of new capabilities across our current platforms as well as new and novel autonomous aircraft concepts.

In 2026, we will scale Platform 2 deliveries per day by 10x while we ramp range by 5x - so, we’ll fly 50x further every day than we do today. We’ll do that while ramping into significantly more complex airspaces and environmental conditions across 5 metros in the US. Then, in 2027 we’ll make a similar 10x+ jump while expanding across the globe.

This is a key leadership position at Zipline to find the right path for what we need to build to enable safely scaling into complex environments, the right architecture to achieve safety and cost goals over the coming hardware and software revisions, and balancing competing objectives as we scale such as range, acoustics, delivery throughput, and cost.

What You'll Do

• Scope: Product level requirements, architecture and decomposition, verification plans, operational performance monitoring of the key attributes and functions of the product such as the following:
• Network Optimization & Capacity; Aircraft Autonomy; Flight Performance; Operational Design Domain / Operating Envelope; Flight Reliability and Fault Management
• What you’ll do across these areas
• Serve as a trusted technical expert of high-reliability, safety‑critical autonomous systems owning system level architecture, requirements, metrics, and test coverage to ensure we ship the right product capabilities, safely.
• Define interfaces and drive cross disciplinary discussions to align on the right architectures to meet our goals
• Develop frameworks and facilitate trade studies to optimize for performance, safety, and cost.
• Create and maintain systems models and diagrams
• Set the bar for hardware and software release standards and test requirements
• Partner with safety engineering and regulatory team to prove flight worthiness to regulators
• Leadership
• Grow and mentor a world‑class Systems Engineering team as well as mentor those in adjacent teams
• Drive multi‑year technical roadmap across the product

What You'll Bring

• Demonstrated leadership delivering complex technical solutions amid ambiguity, competing priorities, and a broad cross‑functional organization.
• A track record of shipping high‑reliability, safety‑critical autonomous systems into real‑world operation.
• Deep systems‑engineering experience with product requirements, architecture, interface definition, system decomposition, verification planning, and validation.
• Technical judgment in safety‑critical autonomy, including fail‑safe, fault‑ tolerant, and fail‑operative approaches that sustain safe operation through faults.
• Experience making principled tradeoffs among safety, performance, cost, and operational constraints using models, metrics, and test evidence.
• Ability to develop technical leaders and communicate clear system decisions across engineering, safety, regulatory, and operational partners.

What Else You Need To Know

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!