Senior Systems Engineer, Autonomous Safety-Critical Systems

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

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