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Salary: USD 150,000 - 215,000 / 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 building the world's largest autonomous logistics system.
In this Senior Loads and Dynamics Engineer role, you will own the loads and dynamics analysis for Zipline's aircraft, driving hardware and product design decisions through first-principles analysis and tight design-test-analysis loops. You will be responsible for developing vehicle load cases, setting analysis requirements and standards, and collaborating across structures, aerodynamics, guidance/navigation/control (GNC), systems, and powertrain teams to achieve product-level outcomes.
Key responsibilities include:
- Owning loads and dynamics analysis for aircraft, including structural modes, random vibration, and forced harmonic vibration
- Defining program loads requirements that support flight performance and vehicle safety
- Building finite element models for structural and loads analyses
- Building and running multi-body simulations assessing dynamics from nominal flight through parachute deployment
- Evaluating static strength and fatigue life using hand calculations and finite element analysis
- Executing dynamic testing end-to-end: pre-test analysis, instrumentation, testing, data analysis, signal processing, and model correlation
- Hands-on work in wind tunnels, vibration test labs, and on the flight line
- Mentoring junior engineers and building standardized in-house tools and processes
You will thrive in a fast-paced environment where pencil-and-paper calculations are your first step, you prefer simple and fast over detailed and large, and you're excited to get hands-on with hardware. You excel at driving design trade studies, supporting flight tests, and tackling complex system-level challenges across disciplines.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, or related field
- 7+ years of industry experience in design and analysis of aircraft structures
- Expertise in aircraft loads analysis and structural dynamics
- Deep knowledge of FEMAP/NASTRAN, Siemens Simcenter, or other finite element software
- Experience with Zona, ZAERO, RCAS, NASTRAN SOL144, or other loads analysis tools
- Analytical/scientific programming experience (Python, MATLAB)
- Clear owner mentality with rapid decision cadence, tolerance for ambiguity and shifting configurations, disciplined documentation habits, and excellent hardware intuition
- Must be eligible to work in the US
- Travel to field sites and test ranges typically <10% depending on program phase
