Senior RF Field Systems Engineer

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Field Systems Engineer specializing in RF to own the investigation and permanent resolution of complex field issues across wireless communication and closely coupled electromechanical systems. You will combine fleet telemetry, RF measurements, and site data to drive hardware, firmware, and operational improvements.

The role requires collaboration across Mechanical, Electrical, RF, Navigation, and Operations teams, with the ability to reproduce failures in lab and field

Qualifications

• Proven experience resolving complex, intermittent field failures in autonomous systems, robotics, or high‑reliability environments.
• Deep expertise in RF systems, wireless communications, antennas, propagation, interference, link budgets, and RF measurement.
• Demonstrated ability to drive corrective actions across design, firmware, manufacturing, maintenance, and operations.

Responsibilities

• Own complex RF and connectivity field issues from escalation through containment and verified resolution.
• Lead technical triage during high‑impact field events and guide Operations, Maintenance, Deployment, and Engineering.
• Analyze mission logs, RF telemetry, packet statistics, navigation data, hardware health, and site configuration.
• Build structured hypothesis trees to distinguish RF, electrical, mechanical, firmware, networking, and navigation causes.
• Diagnose link‑margin degradation, interference, coexistence, multipath, polarization mismatch, and packet loss.
• Determine root causes across antennas, cables, harnesses, grounding, and power integrity.
• Work with Mechanical, Electrical, RF, Embedded Firmware, Networking, Navigation, and Operations teams.
• Partner with navigation teams to understand RF/GNSS/RTK impact on system behavior.
• Reproduce field failures in lab or sites using controlled experiments and fault injection.
• Develop test plans, link budgets, and acceptance criteria connecting analysis to field performance.
• Inspect and troubleshoot antennas, radios, RF cables, connectors, PCBAs, harnesses, and housings.
• Create automated diagnostics, dashboards, and health metrics to detect degradation early.

Skills

RF systems

Wireless communications

Antenna design

Field troubleshooting

Python

SQL

MATLAB

Diagnostics

Root-cause analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

Documentation

Tools

Spectrum analyzers

Vector network analyzers

Oscilloscopes

Power meters

Packet analyzers

Job description

Zipline is seeking a Field Systems Engineer specializing in RF to own the investigation and permanent resolution of complex field issues across wireless communication and closely coupled electromechanical systems. You will combine fleet telemetry, RF measurements, and site data to drive hardware, firmware, and operational improvements.

The role requires collaboration across Mechanical, Electrical, RF, Navigation, and Operations teams, with the ability to reproduce failures in lab and field