System Risk & Safety Lead

South San Francisco, California, USA

About Zipline

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced autonomous delivery service, founded to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and commercial products. Our customers include healthcare systems, governments, retailers, and global brands who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide new logistics services at scale.

Our technology goes beyond drones. We deploy integrated logistics infrastructure that strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and enables instant delivery, transforming how essential goods reach people everywhere. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.

We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics.

About You and The Role

We are looking for a System Risk & Safety Engineer to own and evolve the end‑to‑end risk and safety strategy for Zipline’s aircraft and operations. This is a senior technical leadership role with real authority: you will define what “acceptably safe” means for our systems, ensure we stay ahead of operational scale, and act as a steward of safety across engineering, operations, and the company as a whole.

We start from the risk and the safety target, not from standards. Standards and guidance inform our work, but they do not define safety. This role requires first‑principles thinking, quantitative risk ownership, and the judgment to make difficult safety and risk decisions.

This role is not advisory. You will own the quantitative safety case, drive top‑down safety analyses, and ensure learning from operations continuously feeds back into engineering priorities. Patients, partners, regulators, and the communities we serve rely on us to get this right.

What You'll Do

• Own the quantitative safety case, including decomposition of top-level safety objectives into system requirements, allocations, and operational limitations
• Own top-down fault tree analysis for safety-related events and hazards, including budget allocation and margin tracking
• Ensure safety analyses remain valid as designs, operations, and scale evolve by monitoring current and emerging risks
• Ensure Zipline learns everything possible from test and commercial events, pulling corrective and preventive actions into engineering and operational priorities
• Grow and lead a small but mighty System Risk and Safety Engineering team

External Safety Leadership & Communication

• Act as the technical owner for external safety communication, in partnership with certification, legal, and communications teams
• Proactively establish Zipline as an industry leader in safety transparency and trust
• Provide clear, technically grounded support for reactive communications in response to incidents

Basic Requirements:

• BS and/or MS in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of experience delivering safety‑critical electromechanical systems into real‑world operation
• Demonstrated ownership of system‑level safety analysis and decision‑making
• Strong first‑principles reasoning in the absence of complete regulations or industry guidance
• Experience with hazard analysis techniques such as fault trees, FMEA, and risk modeling
• Comfort engaging deeply with data, models, and operational evidence when needed
• Experience in cross-functional technical leadership of safety critical autonomous systems

Nice to haves:

• Experience working at the intersection of engineering design and live operations
• Exposure to regulator‑facing safety cases or certification efforts
• Experience scaling cross-functional Safety Management Systems

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $200,000 - $260,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!