Senior Electrical Engineer - Long Range Platform

Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Using robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.

About You and The Role

Are you eager to apply your technical skills to solve real-world problems and drive meaningful change? Do you thrive in environments where you're given ownership, creative freedom, and complex challenges to tackle? If so, join the engineering team at Zipline—where your work directly impacts lives every day.

Zipline’s long-range drone platform began operations in Rwanda in 2016. With a fixed-wing design capable of flying over 200 km on a single charge, our drones enable fast, reliable delivery of critical medical supplies to remote communities. From helping new mothers in Rwanda to saving snake bite victims in Ghana, Zipline’s technology has already served millions across the African continent—delivering thousands of life-saving products daily.

As a Senior Electrical Engineer on Zipline’s long-range drone program, you will lead the development, improvement, and hands-on testing of the aircraft’s core electronic systems — including motor controllers, power distribution units, battery management systems, safety circuits, and communication and networking interfaces. You’ll take designs from architecture through prototyping, validation, and into production, working shoulder-to-shoulder with mechanical, software, and manufacturing team members to ensure every design meets the highest standards of performance, reliability, and safety.

This is a highly hands-on engineering role for someone who enjoys spending time in the lab, iterating on boards, running tests, and solving complex hardware problems. You’ll have the opportunity to shape the architecture of a system that will scale Zipline’s impact from thousands to millions of deliveries globally.

In this role, you’ll own electrical subsystems end-to-end: from architecture development and schematic design through bring-up, validation, production, and field support. You’ll work within an existing airborne architecture, owning meaningful subsystem improvements and enabling new capabilities while maintaining the stability of a live, production system. In this role, you will develop hardware for our next generation platform architecture which involves designing electronics in at least one of the following fields: Microprocessors, high-speed communication, GNSS, brushless DC motor drives, power supply, battery, and more. You’ll collaborate closely with firmware, mechanical, systems, manufacturing, and operations teams to deliver hardware that balances practical constraints with elegant solutions.

What You'll Do

• Own the electrical design for volume production through a design cycle including requirements, prototype, schematic capture, layout, and validation.
• Make impactful design decisions daily, while working with a high level of independence.
• Lead trade studies, understand competing design priorities, and provide direction and clarity for burning down risk.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with reliability, mechanical, embedded, and systems engineers in all stages of development, including:
  • Concept: System requirement, specification
  • Design: Schematic capture, PCB layout, system integration
  • Validation: Function and reliability test
  • Production: DFM, design drawings, manufacturing, EOL test, certification
  • Deployment: Troubleshoot field issues, develop rapid mitigations, roll learnings into future design revision
• Travel occasionally to support supplier and manufacturer visit, product deployment, and field validation.

What You'll Bring

• A bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or related field with a strong foundation in first principles engineering
• Minimum 4 years experience designing complex PCBAs, including: circuit analysis, schematic capture, PCB layout, packaging, integration, production, and board-level validation.
• Experience with at least some of the following areas:
  • Mixed signal design and high speed design
  • Lithium Ion battery pack design– BMS, safety, power distribution, etc.
  • BLDC motor drives
  • Basic embedded communications busses (e.g. SPI, I2C, UART, CAN)
  • Higher speed communications (e.g. Ethernet, LVDS)
• Enthusiasm for working in a fast-paced, hands on, collaborative, cross-functional environment.
• A desire to spend time in the engineering lab and experience with common lab equipment, such as an Oscilloscope, DMM, TDR, LCR, Network Analyzer, etc.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to explain technical challenges to both fellow engineers and non-engineers alike.
• Must be eligible to work in the US.
• Must be able to work at Zipline’s South San Francisco office.

What Else You Need to Know