Mechanical Engineer

Socket.dev; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline builds autonomous delivery aircraft and ground systems that operate daily in varying field conditions. You will own hardware that affects flight safety, fleet reliability, manufacturability, and the pace at which we scale service to new regions.

As part of the Ground Systems team, you will design mechanical and electromechanical subsystems, create CAD drawings, run verification tests, and collaborate with systems, software, and supply chain to bring products from concept to field-ready

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or related field.
• 5–10+ years in mechanical/electromechanical design delivering subsystems.
• Experience designing mechanisms and actuators including motors and gearboxes.
• Strong CAD and documentation skills for 20–100 part systems.
• Ability to work across electrical, software, and manufacturing teams.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of mechanical and electromechanical subsystems from requirements to production ramp.
• Produce and defend system-level trade studies, tolerance stacks, load paths, and failure modes.
• Create CAD assemblies and manufacturing docs; lead design reviews and DFMs.
• Develop verification plans and execute tests; analyze results and drive corrective actions.
• Lead supplier selection, qualification, and handoff with DFM feedback.
• Collaborate daily with Systems, Software, Production, and Field Ops to align requirements.
• Translate prototypes into cost-target designs for medium-volume production.
• Serve as technical authority in design reviews and postmortems; mentor peers.

Skills

Mechanical design

Electromechanical design

CAD experience

NPI into production

Interdisciplinary collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

NX, SolidWorks

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

Zipline builds autonomous delivery aircraft and ground systems that operate daily in various field conditions. You will own hardware that directly affects flight safety, fleet reliability, manufacturability, and the speed at which we scale service to new regions. The Ground Systems team is responsible for all of the infrastructure that enables our Zips to take off, fly, land, charge and prepare for their next mission. Our goal is to develop elegant integration solutions that are modular, cost effective, and adaptable to both new and existing building structures and sites worldwide for a variety of customers making drone deliveries.

What You'll Do

We are looking for an experienced mechanical engineer to own the design of entire systems and subassemblies for next generation products that are unlike anything that exists today. This will include design of structural components, mechanisms, and electronics integration. As a member of our core design team, you will make important decisions about the product architecture and create designs that will enable practical scale on a short timeline that will meet high product reliability targets. You will quickly iterate and downselect based on data from your analysis and test results from your prototypes. Collaboration cross functionally will be key with electrical, software, civil, NPI and supply chain teams to bring your designs to production and into the field.

In this role you will:

• Own the end-to-end delivery of mechanical and electromechanical subsystems, from requirements definition through concept development, design, build, verification, release, production ramp, and sustaining engineering
• Produce and defend system-level trade studies, tolerance stacks, load paths, failure modes, and hand-calcs that bound designs for safety-critical loads and manufacturability.
• Create CAD assemblies, detailed drawings, GD&T, and manufacturing documentation for 20–100 part assemblies; own design reviews, DFM, and first-article criteria.
• Develop and execute verification plans (environmental, fatigue, vibration, thermal, EMI/EMC where applicable), build test rigs/fixtures, run test campaigns, analyze results, and close findings with corrective actions and measurable reliability improvements
• Lead supplier selection, qualification, and handoff: drive DFM feedback, define inspection criteria, and reduce supplier NPI cycle time and scrap rates. Own escalation and remediation when supplier output risks field operations
• Partner daily with Systems, Software, Production, Integration & Test, Reliability, and Field Ops to align requirements, manage trade-offs, and eliminate deployment blockers
• Translate prototypes into designs that meet target cost, cycle time, and inspection rates for medium-volume production; own metrics for manufacturability and in-field reliability and drive them to target.
• Serve as a technical authority in design reviews and postmortems; lead incident root-cause investigations when field events occur
• Mentor peers and junior engineers, and raise the quality of mechanical design practices across the team.

What You'll Bring

• 5–10+ years of mechanical/electromechanical design engineering experience delivering complex subsystems or products through NPI into production
• Proven track record owning complex subassemblies or full systems over at least 2 product programs (concept, prototype, validation, production)
• Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals including load estimation, structural hand calcs, FEA, material selection, clean CAD designs and design-for-assembly/field-service practices
• Demonstrated experience designing mechanisms and actuator systems, including selection and integration of motors, gearboxes, bearings, linear actuators, springs, linkages, sensors, and other motion-control components.
• Experience evaluating mechanism kinematics, actuator loads, friction, efficiency, backlash, compliance, duty cycle, wear, fatigue, and life.
• Practical knowledge of manufacturing methods such as welding, sheetmetal forming, extrusion, CNC machining, injection molding, etc
• Experience partnering with contract manufacturers to ramp up production of high volume lines
• Strong CAD and documentation skills: able to own 3D assemblies and 2D detail drawings for 20–100 part systems; experience with NX, SolidWorks, or equivalent
• Disciplined processes: Your parts are released, BOMs are maintained, SOPs created for builds, and timelines are up-to-date
• Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication. You know how to tailor to your audience with the right level of technical depth to be as effective as possible, including using basic tools in place of full CAD when it makes sense
• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related discipline
• Ability to periodically (<10%) travel to visit customers and suppliers
• Nice to Have

• NX is your primary CAD tool
• Experience designing autonomous machinery, robotics, industrial automation, aerospace ground equipment, material-handling systems, or other electromechanical products.
• Experience developing custom actuators, drivetrains, latching systems, or compliant mechanisms

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.

Voluntary Self-Identification

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.