Senior Mechanical Test Engineer, Structures and Mechanisms

About the Position

Senior Mechanical Test Engineer, Structures and Mechanisms Job at Zipline, South San Francisco, CA

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. 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.

We are seeking a Senior Mechanical Test Engineer for Structures and Mechanisms to join our team in South San Francisco, CA. This role is pivotal in ensuring flight safety, fleet reliability, manufacturability, and the speed at which we scale service to new regions.

Responsibilities

• Design, analyze, build, commission, and maintain custom test stands, fixtures, environmental setups, automated cycle rigs, and representative system test articles.
• Own end-to-end development and execution of validation campaigns of major structural and mechanism components from prototype through fleet deployment.
• Develop verification plans with clear coverage, traceability, sample sizes, margins, and acceptance criteria to demonstrate structural strength, fatigue, mechanism performance, high-cycle life, wear, and more over thousands of flights and years of duty.
• Lead failure investigations from test or flight using physical inspection, teardown, dimensional measurements, logs, and instrumentation to drive failures to root cause and permanent corrective action.
• Work directly with design, systems, and manufacturing partner teams to clearly communicate test asset functions, present test evidence, unresolved risks, and release recommendations.

Requirements

• Proven ownership of high-performance or low-margin mechanical or electromechanical hardware validation through development, qualification, production ramp, and field deployment.
• Deep hands-on experience designing and building mechanical test rigs, fixtures, instrumented assemblies, and automated cycle-test systems.
• Strong mechanical fundamentals and comfort designing in CAD.
• Practical experience selecting, installing, calibrating, and troubleshooting sensors and data-acquisition systems.
• Experience developing automated test and analysis tools using Python or an equivalent language.
• Track record finding root causes for complex or intermittent failures and verifying that corrective actions prevent recurrence.
• Ability to translate imperfect field data into representative laboratory tests and actionable engineering conclusions.
• Experience working with design teams, suppliers, manufacturing, and technicians to execute test programs under aggressive schedules.

We Offer

• Competitive salary range: $145,000 – $225,000
• Total compensation includes equity, incentives, and benefits such as medical, dental, vision, paid time off, and more.
• Opportunity to work in a dynamic, fast-paced environment with a global impact.

About the Company

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 traditionally underrepresented in tech.

If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply. If you’d like to learn more about Zipline and our teams, feel free to check out our Instagram, one of our Reddit AMAs, or our website.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.