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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 redefining global logistics and healthcare access.
In this Senior Loads and Dynamics Engineer role, you will drive hardware and product design decisions using rotordynamics expertise. You will own loads development for aircraft propellers, perform dynamic analyses including structural modes and rotordynamics simulations, and define rotorcraft loads requirements that support flight performance and vehicle safety. Your responsibilities include building finite element models of propellers and powertrain components, collaborating with aerodynamics and mechanical engineering teams to design high-performance propeller and rotor blades, and evaluating static strength and fatigue life of dynamic system components.
You will execute propeller and aircraft testing from start-to-finish, including pre-test analysis, instrumentation, testing, data analysis, signal processing, and model correlation. This requires hands-on work in wind tunnels, vibration test labs, and on the flight line. You will also level-up the engineering organization by providing mentorship, guidance, best practices, and building standardized in-house tools and processes.
The role works closely with structures, aerodynamics, GNC, systems, and powertrain engineers to drive rotor system requirements and rotorcraft vehicle configuration decisions. You will own design trade studies, support flight tests to validate analysis, and tackle complex system-level challenges. The ideal candidate takes a hands-on approach, prefers simple and fast solutions over detailed and large ones, and excels in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
Travel to field sites and test ranges is typically less than 10% depending on program phase.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, or related field
- 7+ years of industry experience in design and analysis of rotor and vehicle structures (preference for eVTOL vehicle experience)
- Expertise in helicopter/rotorcraft aeromechanics, including aerodynamics, dynamics, loads, stability, and performance
- Deep knowledge of RCAS, CAMRAD II, FlightLab, Dyrobes Rotor, or other comprehensive rotor analysis codes
- Experience with FEMAP/NASTRAN, Siemens Simcenter, or other finite element software
- Analytical/scientific programming experience (Python, MATLAB)
- Must-have traits: 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
