Senior Avionics Engineer — Autonomous Drone Hardware Leader

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 135,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Medical/dental/vision insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Zipline seeks an experienced Senior Avionics Electrical Engineer to own electrical hardware from architecture through bring-up, validation, release, and fleet support. You will collaborate with electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, manufacturing, test, quality, supply-chain teams to build safe, robust hardware ready for global operation.

This hands-on role requires strong circuit design and debugging skills, with the ability to carry hardware from prototype to fielded product and mentor

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years designing and releasing electrical hardware used in real-world deployments.
• Strong fundamentals across analog, digital, mixed-signal, power, sensing, and communications.

Responsibilities

• Own avionics electrical subsystems from concept through design, validation, release, production ramp, and field support.
• Design and develop PCBAs for aircraft and ground-support hardware including digital, analog, sensing, and power circuits.
• Create and review schematics, select components, define interfaces, guide PCB layout, and ensure designs meet requirements.
• Bring up new boards, write and execute validation plans, analyze test data, and drive design changes based on results.
• Lead root-cause investigations for electrical issues during bring-up, qualification, manufacturing, flight test, or field operation.
• Own corrective-action plans for fleet or production issues including containment, investigation, design revision, release, and verification.
• Partner with firmware and software teams on hardware-software interfaces, sensor integration, diagnostics, and test hooks.
• Work with mechanical engineering on packaging, connectorization, cable routing, weight, and thermal constraints.
• Collaborate with manufacturing, test, quality, and supply-chain to improve yield and resolve blockers.
• Define requirements, test procedures, and release packages for avionics hardware.
• Support design reviews and technical tradeoffs across reliability, performance, cost, weight, power, schedule, and manufacturability.
• Mentor engineers to raise the quality of electrical design, validation, debugging, and release practices.

Skills

Electrical engineering fundamentals

PCB design

Debugging complex electrical issues

Test planning and execution

Root-cause analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

Ownership of designs

Clear communication/documentation

Safety and reliability focus

Hardware-software interface knowledge

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or related field

Tools

Altium Designer

Python

MATLAB

Job description

Zipline seeks an experienced Senior Avionics Electrical Engineer to own electrical hardware from architecture through bring-up, validation, release, and fleet support. You will collaborate with electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, manufacturing, test, quality, supply-chain teams to build safe, robust hardware ready for global operation.

This hands-on role requires strong circuit design and debugging skills, with the ability to carry hardware from prototype to fielded product and mentor