Senior Systems Engineer

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline seeks a Senior Systems Engineer to lead the design, integration, and qualification of high‑reliability, electromechanical systems for autonomous delivery platforms. You will own requirements, drive trade studies, and collaborate across engineering teams to ensure safety, performance, and regulatory readiness.

The role emphasizes hands‑on leadership in complex programs, field‑proven processes, and the ability to push for robust solutions in safety‑critical environments while advancing

Qualifications

• BS and/or MS in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering or related field.
• 5+ years of real‑world experience in safety critical electromechanical systems.
• Ability to solve complex multidisciplinary problems on schedule independently.
• Experience with modeling tools and systems engineering methods.
• Experience with harsh climatic environments, vibration, ESD, and/or electrical noise.
• Experience with fail‑safe fault‑tolerant modes and fail‑operative modes.
• Comfort with energy budgets, flight dynamics, and risk thresholds.
• Experience establishing systems engineering processes in new projects or startups.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a trusted technical expert of deploying high‑reliability, autonomous systems into safety‑critical environments including owning requirements, metrics, test coverage, and validation processes to ensure we ship safe and robust systems
• Own system and subsystem requirement definition, decomposition, and traceability
• Define interfaces and drive cross‑disciplinary discussions to align on budgets
• Develop frameworks and facilitate trade studies to optimize for performance, safety, and cost across key system architecture or operations decisions
• Evaluate hardware and software release standards and test requirements
• Partner with design engineering, other systems engineers and certification team to prove flight worthiness to regulators

Skills

Multidisciplinary problem solving

Systems engineering

Statistical analysis

Modeling tools

Harsh environments design

Education

BS/MS in Aerospace/Systems Engineering

Tools

Modeling language

Systems modeling

Simulation software

Job description

About Zipline

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products.

About You And The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Systems Engineer to join our team who has developed, tested, and deployed complex electromechanical systems into safety critical environments. Do you enjoy tackling the most cross‑disciplinary parts of a complex program? Do you thrive in solving business‑critical problems with little direction, a high degree of ownership, and the freedom to make it happen? At Zipline our work is intended for the field. Patients are counting on it today – there is no time for coming up short. If being an engineering leader on the team driving us to achieve our ambitious goals to scale operations and production, improve reliability, level‑up our customer experience, and efficiently mature our processes to support all of this appeals to you, read on.

Zipline was founded by engineers dedicated to making the world a better place. We are scaling around the world and we need someone to join our team who is excited to help level up Systems Engineering at Zipline. Every day, your commitment and technical leadership will help save lives.

What You'll Do

• Serve as a trusted technical expert of deploying high‑reliability, autonomous systems into safety‑critical environments including owning requirements, metrics, test coverage, and validation processes to ensure we ship safe and robust systems
• Own system and subsystem requirement definition, decomposition, and traceability
• Define interfaces and drive cross‑disciplinary discussions to align on budgets
• Develop frameworks and facilitate trade studies to optimize for performance, safety, and cost across key system architecture or operations decisions
• Evaluate hardware and software release standards and test requirements
• Partner with design engineering, other systems engineers and certification team to prove flight worthiness to regulators

What You'll Bring

• BS and/or MS in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering or related field
• 5+ years of real‑world experience in safety critical electromechanical systems, for example in autonomous vehicles, aerospace, or industrial automation fields including systems/vehicle design experience
• Ability to solve complex multidisciplinary problems on schedule independently
• The ability to dive in when appropriate to solve problems using tools such as your modeling language / tool of choice, systems modeling, and statistical analysis among others
• Knowledge from designing systems that were resilient to harsh climatic environments, mechanical vibration, ESD, and/or high electrical noise
• Experience with not only fail‑safe fault‑tolerant modes but also fail‑operative modes that enable the system to continue to operate through faults
• Sufficiently comfortable with energy budgets, flight dynamics, and statistical analysis methods to set the appropriate risk‑based thresholds for things like energy margins and environmental limitations
• Ideally, you’ll also have a proven track record setting up systems engineering processes in new projects and/or startup environments such as implementing requirements including processes, definition, decomposition, and verification

What Else You Need To Know

The starting cash range for this role is $160,000 - $260,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate’s experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.

We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!