Senior Mechanical Engineer - Production Equipment Lead

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline's Manufacturing Engineering team at Coop, Zipline's South San Francisco site, owns the mechanical equipment enabling aircraft assembly, battery integration, docks, and subsystems.

You will stay hands-on while leading technical direction: roughly 75% designing, building, commissioning, and improving equipment on the factory floor, and 25% people and program leadership: setting standards, coordinating delivery, and mentoring others.

Qualifications

• 2+ years designing production equipment, fixtures, or custom automation in high-volume or fast-ramping manufacturing.
• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• 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 experience acceptable with strong NX learning).
• Hands-on experience commissioning equipment on the factory floor; on-site work most of the week.

Responsibilities

• Lead mechanical equipment design reviews and technical tradeoffs; establish tooling standards and coordinate priorities across projects.
• Own end-to-end delivery of production equipment and tooling projects for aircraft and subsystems: requirements, CAD, drawings, vendor oversight, build, commissioning, release.
• Improve tooling availability to >95% and reduce assembly cycle time by 20–40% per station; FPY uplift by ≥10% in 6–12 months.
• Design and install alignment fixtures, tooling, ergonomic stations, poka-yoke devices, and automated end-of-line rigs.
• Lead on-line debugging and rapid root-cause analysis during launches; be ready for weekend/evening commissioning.
• Create tooling design standards, GD&T practices, tolerance stacks, and material/process choices for safety and maintainability.
• Mentor 1–4 tooling engineers/technicians; manage releases, reviews, and hiring as needed.
• Coordinate with Design, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, Test Eng., and Field Ops on tooling scope and schedules.
• Manage vendor relationships; issue RFQs, evaluate proposals, and conduct acceptance testing.

Skills

GD&T

Tolerance analysis

Mechanism design

Material selection

Failure-mode thinking

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

Siemens NX

SolidWorks/Creo

3D CAD

Job description

Zipline's Manufacturing Engineering team at Coop, Zipline's South San Francisco site, owns the mechanical equipment enabling aircraft assembly, battery integration, docks, and subsystems.

You will stay hands-on while leading technical direction: roughly 75% designing, building, commissioning, and improving equipment on the factory floor, and 25% people and program leadership: setting standards, coordinating delivery, and mentoring others.