Production Tooling Engineer – Fixtures & Automation

Candidate; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 105,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Production Equipment & Tooling Engineer for its South San Francisco manufacturing site. You will own design and deployment of fixtures, tooling, and end-of-line test equipment that enable aircraft assembly and battery integration, influencing throughput and uptime.

The role requires 2+ years designing production equipment in high‑volume settings, with hands‑on factory floor experience and strong NX/3D CAD skills.

Qualifications

• 2+ years designing production equipment, fixtures, or custom automation in a high‑volume or fast‑ramping environment.
• Mastery of GD&T, tolerance analysis, mechanism design, material selection, and failure‑mode thinking for assembly tooling.
• Proficiency in 3D CAD; Siemens NX preferred (SolidWorks/Creo acceptable with NX learning).

Responsibilities

• Own equipment requirements, acceptance criteria, production handoff, and sustainment through ramps.
• Deliver end-to-end production equipment projects: requirements, CAD, vendor oversight, build, commissioning, and release.
• Improve tooling availability to 95%+, reduce manual assembly cycle time by 20–40% per station, FPY uplift by 10% in 6–12 months.

Skills

Production equipment design

GD&T & tolerance analysis

3D CAD

On-site fabrication support

Vendor coordination

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

Siemens NX

SolidWorks/Creo

Job description

Zipline is seeking a Production Equipment & Tooling Engineer for its South San Francisco manufacturing site. You will own design and deployment of fixtures, tooling, and end-of-line test equipment that enable aircraft assembly and battery integration, influencing throughput and uptime.

The role requires 2+ years designing production equipment in high‑volume settings, with hands‑on factory floor experience and strong NX/3D CAD skills.