User Experience Designer: Hardware Systems

flyzipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 153,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a User Experience Designer for its New Products team to shape how users interact with Platform 2, spanning hardware and software interfaces. The role sits at the intersection of industrial design, software, operations, and service design, owning design requirements through development to optimize operator and customer experiences.

The position emphasizes field research, prototyping across multiple fidelity levels, and advocating clarity and safety in autonomous delivery

Qualifications

• 5+ years in UX/industrial/service/product design shaping user interaction with physical products and digital interfaces.
• Strong portfolio with real-world results.
• Visual comms skills: journey maps, diagrams, wireframes, storyboards, prototypes.
• Ability to prototype physically and digitally with simplicity.
• Comfort presenting to executives and championing design decisions.
• Strong systems thinking to simplify complex technical experiences.
• Design research: interviews, field visits, focus groups, surveys.
• Ability to move from abstract journeys to detailed interactions.
• Experience in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with evolving constraints.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with practical understanding.

Responsibilities

• Design end-to-end user experiences across physical and digital touchpoints, including aircraft, pods, docks, loading workflows, partner infrastructure, operator tools, and customer-facing moments.
• Translate complex system behavior into clear interaction models, user journeys, service flows, and product requirements.
• Partner with Engineers and Industrial Designers to define physical interactions, affordances, feedback, status communication, and error recovery.
• Work with Digital Product teams to ensure consistency between physical systems behavior and software interfaces.
• Conduct field research with operators, partners, customers, technicians, and internal teams to understand real-world workflows and pain points.
• Identify design opportunities across system hardware, software, service, and operations.
• Help prioritize user needs and translate them into product requirements.
• Prototype and test interaction concepts quickly, using sketches, diagrams, click-through prototypes, physical mockups, or in-field simulations.
• Advocate for clarity, safety, usability, and human trust in autonomous delivery experiences.

Skills

UX Design

Industrial Design

Service/Interaction Design

Product Design

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. Our customers include the world's largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we've built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations. Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.

About You and The Role

The New Products team is seeking a User Experience Designer to research and shape how people interact with Zipline's precision delivery system, Platform 2. This cross-disciplinary role sits at the intersection of industrial design, software, operations, and service design. You will focus on the human experience of our hardware and the digital tools that support them. You will own the definition of design requirements for system touchpoints and champion them through all phases of development to enable the best experiences for Zipline operators and customers.

What You'll Do

• Design end-to-end user experiences across physical and digital touchpoints, including aircraft, pods, docks, loading workflows, partner infrastructure, operator tools, and customer-facing moments.
• Translate complex system behavior into clear interaction models, user journeys, service flows, and product requirements.
• Partner with Engineers and Industrial Designers to define physical interactions, affordances, feedback, status communication, and error recovery.
• Work with Digital Product teams to ensure consistency between physical systems behavior and software interfaces.
• Conduct field research with operators, partners, customers, technicians, and internal teams to understand real-world workflows and pain points.
• Identify design opportunities across system hardware, software, service, and operations.
• Help prioritize user needs and translate them into product requirements.
• Prototype and test interaction concepts quickly, using whatever fidelity is appropriate: sketches, diagrams, click-through prototypes, physical mockups, or in-field simulations.
• Advocate for clarity, safety, usability, and human trust in autonomous delivery experiences.

What You'll Bring

• Minimum 5+ years of experience in User Experience, Industrial Design, Service / Interaction Design, or Product Design shaping user connection to physical products, digital interfaces, and real-world workflows.
• A strong portfolio beautifully showcasing real-world results.
• Strong visual communication skills, including journey maps, diagrams, wireframes, storyboards, and prototypes.
• A practical, simplicity-seeking design sensibility and an ability to prototype physically and digitally - beautifully.
• A high degree of comfort presenting work to executive leadership and acting as the champion for product requirements and design decisions.
• Strong systems thinking and the ability to make complex technical experiences simple and usable.
• Design Research acumen: conducting in-person analysis of user behavior through interviews, field visits, focus groups and surveys
• Ability to move between abstract journey-level thinking and detailed interaction design that are easily understandable by teams who will implement them.
• Ability to work in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with evolving technical constraints.
• Entrepreneurial mindset and a humble confidence backed by real-world understanding.

What Else You Need To Know

The starting cash range for this role is $153,000 - $210,000. 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 compensati