Senior Avionics Engineer – Autonomous Drone Hardware Lead

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

In‑office meals

Medical, dental & vision insurance

Cellphone stipend

Wellness stipend

Job summary

Zipline is hiring a senior avionics hardware engineer to own aircraft and ground systems from concept through bring‑up, validation, and fleet release. You will work with electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, and manufacturing teams to build safe, robust hardware for global operations.

We expect strong proficiency in PCB design, test planning, root‑cause analysis, and system integration, with a track record of delivering field‑qualified hardware used in real deployments.

Qualifications

• 5+ years designing and releasing electrical hardware for shipped products.
• Strong fundamentals across analog, digital, mixed-signal, power, sensing, and communication circuits.
• Experience designing PCBAs with schematic capture, component selection, layout guidance, bring-up.
• Ability to debug complex electrical issues with lab equipment.
• Experience writing and executing test plans for design validation and production test.
• Strong root-cause analysis skills and practical corrective actions.
• Knowledge of PCB layout tradeoffs, signal integrity, power integrity, EMI/EMC, thermal behavior, manufacturability.
• Collaborate with electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, manufacturing, operations, quality, and supply‑chain teams.
• Ownership to drive designs/issues from start to release.
• Clear communication and documentation, especially for safety and fleet operations.

Responsibilities

• Own avionics electrical subsystems from concept to production ramp and field support.
• Design and develop PCBA for aircraft and ground‑support hardware.
• Create and review schematics, select components, define interfaces, guide layout.
• Bring up boards, run validation, analyze data, drive design changes.
• Lead root‑cause investigations for electrical issues across life cycle.
• Define corrective actions for fleet or production issues and verify results.
• Partner with firmware/software on hardware‑software interfaces and tests.
• Work with mechanical engineering on packaging, routing, weight, thermal limits.
• Collaborate with manufacturing, test, quality, and supply‑chain to improve yield.
• Define requirements, test procedures, release packages, and change control.
• Support design reviews, failure reviews, and critical tradeoffs.

Skills

Electrical fundamentals

PCB design

Debugging

Test planning

Root cause analysis

Layout tradeoffs

Cross-functional collaboration

Ownership

Documentation

Bachelor's in Electrical/Computer Eng

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field

Tools

Altium Designer

CAN

UART

SPI

I2C

Ethernet

GNSS

Job description

Zipline is hiring a senior avionics hardware engineer to own aircraft and ground systems from concept through bring‑up, validation, and fleet release. You will work with electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, and manufacturing teams to build safe, robust hardware for global operations.

We expect strong proficiency in PCB design, test planning, root‑cause analysis, and system integration, with a track record of delivering field‑qualified hardware used in real deployments.