Senior Mechanical Engineer - Long-Range Drone Platform

Namely; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 145,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an owner-oriented Mechanical Engineer for its Long Range Platform team to design, validate, and deliver airframe and electromechanical hardware used in long-distance autonomous delivery aircraft.

You will work across field logistics, fleet operations, and mass production to reduce weight, improve reliability, and enable higher sortie rates with end-to-end hardware responsibility from requirements to sustainment.

Qualifications

• 4+ years experience designing electromechanical and structural assemblies.
• Deep CAD fluency managing multi-part subassemblies and top-level integration.
• Proven use of FEA and hand calculations to establish safety margins for flight hardware.

Responsibilities

• Own long-range mechanical subsystems from concept to production.
• Translate fleet requirements into mechanical performance targets and designs.
• Produce CAD models, GD&T, and manufacturing drawings for volume production.
• Run first-principles analysis and validate with bench tests and flight-representative rigs.
• Prototype rapidly, lead build-test-iterate campaigns, and define go/no-go metrics.

Skills

CAD fluency

FEA

Tolerance analysis

Prototype/testing

Supplier engagement

Tools

NX

Job description

Zipline is seeking an owner-oriented Mechanical Engineer for its Long Range Platform team to design, validate, and deliver airframe and electromechanical hardware used in long-distance autonomous delivery aircraft.

You will work across field logistics, fleet operations, and mass production to reduce weight, improve reliability, and enable higher sortie rates with end-to-end hardware responsibility from requirements to sustainment.