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Zipline is the world's largest autonomous drone delivery service, operating on four continents and completing millions of deliveries of blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. The company has safely flown over 140 million commercial autonomous miles and makes a delivery somewhere globally every 30 seconds.
As a Flight Test Operator, you will be the hands-on executor of high-volume flight testing campaigns that validate the safety, reliability, and operational readiness of Zipline's autonomous aircraft and delivery systems. You'll serve as Remote Pilot in Command, conducting repeatable flight operations across diverse mission profiles, environmental conditions, and system configurations to identify failure modes and build confidence in system performance at scale.
Key responsibilities include: executing daily flight test campaigns with high-volume mission profiles, reliability testing, regression testing, and fault injection testing; validating system performance through repeatable ground and flight procedures across varied operating conditions; troubleshooting and repairing software and hardware issues on-site to return aircraft to flight safely and efficiently; providing qualitative and quantitative analysis of aircraft and system performance against expected outcomes and safety requirements; escalating flight anomalies and recurring failures to engineering and safety teams; enforcing and improving site safety by managing risks during high-tempo operations, running briefings and debriefs, and refining standard operating procedures; and identifying opportunities to increase throughput, consistency, and data quality without compromising safety.
You will work onsite at Zipline's test site in outdoor/field conditions, with expectations for weekend, night, and overnight shifts, plus occasional regional travel between test sites. The role demands hands-on problem-solving in a high-tempo, failure-heavy environment where consistent execution, rapid diagnostics, and repairs under time pressure are routine. You'll coordinate closely with reliability engineering, software, hardware, safety, maintenance, manufacturing, and field operations teams to turn test results into measurable system improvements.
