Onsite Automation Engineer, Production Equipment

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an Automation Engineer, Production Equipment, at its South San Francisco site to design, integrate, and sustain production automation for aircraft assembly, battery integration, and related subsystems. You will translate throughput, uptime, and safety needs into equipment requirements, coordinating with vendors and internal teams.

You will lead hands‑on equipment design and commissioning on the factory floor, with regular on‑site work and occasional off‑hours readiness work.

Qualifications

• Requires a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated mastery of GD&T, tolerance analysis, mechanism design, material selection, and failure‑mode thinking for assembly tooling.
• Hands‑on experience commissioning equipment on the factory floor, supporting fabrication, build, debug, test, and operator training.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate automation opportunities against manual work content, cycle time, first‑pass yield, uptime, and maintainability; translate into equipment requirements.
• Integrate automation into existing assembly workflows; verify vendor systems against criteria and train operators during deployment.
• Own the integration and deployment of production automation from requirements through vendor fabrication, build, commissioning, and production release.

Skills

GD&T mastery

Tolerance analysis

Mechanism design

Material selection

Failure‑mode thinking

On-site fabrication support

Safety‑critical mindset

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

Siemens NX

SolidWorks/Creo

Job description

Zipline is seeking an Automation Engineer, Production Equipment, at its South San Francisco site to design, integrate, and sustain production automation for aircraft assembly, battery integration, and related subsystems. You will translate throughput, uptime, and safety needs into equipment requirements, coordinating with vendors and internal teams.

You will lead hands‑on equipment design and commissioning on the factory floor, with regular on‑site work and occasional off‑hours readiness work.