SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 160,000 - 235,000 / annual
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 flown over 140 million commercial autonomous miles and is redefining logistics and healthcare access globally.
You will lead the mechanical engineering team for the Long Range Platform, which integrates aircraft, ground systems, software, manufacturing, and operations. This is a strategic player-coach role where you'll set mechanical engineering strategy, define product direction and multi-generation roadmaps, and stay technically engaged in design, testing, and problem-solving.
Key responsibilities include:
- Building and developing a high-performing mechanical engineering team with clear ownership, feedback, and growth opportunities
- Owning mechanical engineering outcomes across the platform, setting strategy and priorities while balancing customer value, technical risk, investment, and execution
- Guiding mechanical architecture and design for aircraft structures, mechanisms, powertrain, batteries, avionics packaging, and ground systems
- Translating customer and operator needs into product requirements through direct engagement and field observation
- Driving systems engineering across mechanical and platform interfaces, including safety and reliability analyses
- Staying technically engaged through design reviews, analysis, prototyping, and testing
- Leading system-level tradeoffs across safety, weight, performance, reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, cost, and schedule
- Partnering across Product, Electrical, Software, Systems, Integration, Test, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Operations
- Moving hardware from prototype through qualification, production ramp, and deployment
- Working with suppliers and manufacturing partners to improve quality and production readiness
- Leading root-cause investigation and corrective action on difficult design, test, production, and field problems
- Communicating direction with clarity and building a culture of ownership and technical rigor
Requirements:
Must Have:
- Experience building and developing high-performing mechanical engineering teams, including setting priorities, coaching engineers, and creating clear ownership
- Strong mechanical engineering background with significant direct technical contributions to complex hardware earlier in career
- Track record of translating customer needs into product requirements and engineering roadmaps, carrying electromechanical products from architecture through test, production, and field deployment
- Technical depth in mechanical systems such as structures, mechanisms, actuators, motors, sensors, and electromechanical integration
- Strong fundamentals in first-principles analysis, hand calculations, materials, GD&T, tolerance analysis, fatigue, and FEA
- Experience with prototyping, test planning, validation, and using results to guide design decisions
- Experience designing for manufacturing, assembly, inspection, reliability, and serviceability
- Track record of taking ownership across team boundaries and resolving difficult technical problems
- Clear written, verbal, and visual communication skills
Nice to Have:
- Experience applying systems engineering, safety, or verification practices to complex real-world products such as robotics, aerospace, automotive, or industrial automation
- Experience with aircraft structures, composite materials, electric powertrains, or battery systems
- Experience scaling hardware from early builds to production
- Experience supporting systems in field environments with high reliability and maintenance requirements
- Experience with Siemens NX
