Senior Mechanical Engineer - NPI & Production Scaling

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 215,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Medical, dental, vision benefits

PTO

Job summary

Zipline is seeking an experienced hardware engineer to lead end-to-end development of the droid subsystems, from concept through full-rate production. You will own test campaigns, coordinate with contract manufacturers, and drive design for manufacturability across global supply partners.

Join a cross-disciplinary hardware team delivering high‑volume, reliable systems and travel internationally to partner sites, shaping the future of rapid, equitable global logistics at Zipline.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering physical products from design through production.
• Experience running or heavily contributing to test campaigns for hardware.
• Ability to work across cross-functional teams including design, test, and manufacturing.

Responsibilities

• Take droid subsystems from the design phase through DVT, PVT, tooling release, first article, to full‑rate production.
• Own test campaigns for the subsystems you drive, coordinating fixtures and root-cause analysis.
• Stand up NPI and production lines at contract manufacturers, defining processes, work instructions, and training.
• Serve as the point person for supplier communication, ECOs, deviation management, and Jira hygiene.
• Modify existing designs with CAD changes and drive them through revision control.
• Collaborate with design, test, TPM, supply chain, quality, and manufacturing engineering.
• Drive first-article builds and pilot runs and ensure line readiness on the production floor.
• Travel to suppliers and manufacturing partners internationally.
• Bring production-focused perspective into design reviews early to favor buildability.

Skills

Mechanical design

Cross-functional collaboration

Project ownership

Manufacturing familiarity

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

Siemens NX

Creo

CATIA

SolidWorks

Job description

Zipline is seeking an experienced hardware engineer to lead end-to-end development of the droid subsystems, from concept through full-rate production. You will own test campaigns, coordinate with contract manufacturers, and drive design for manufacturability across global supply partners.

Join a cross-disciplinary hardware team delivering high‑volume, reliable systems and travel internationally to partner sites, shaping the future of rapid, equitable global logistics at Zipline.