Senior Electrical Engineer at Zipline in South San Francisco, CA

About Zipline

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and 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 to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products.

Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations.

Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. 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. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.

About You and The Role

The Senior Electrical Engineer will develop power electronics focused avionics for our next generation aircraft. We are looking for an engineer with a strong foundation in board level design and an excellent grasp of electronics development, processes, and tools.

As a Senior Electrical Engineer on the Powertrain team, you will be responsible for architecting and designing electronics including motor inverters, power distribution, battery management, fail-safe / safety, and communication and networking systems. These components are at the core of a new unmanned aerial system that will enable Zipline’s impact to expand from 100,000 deliveries a year to 100 million across the globe. In addition, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with world class engineers across all disciplines and experience levels. Zipline values personal development highly and encourages an environment of continuous learning and mentorship.

The Powertrain team encounters many challenges when designing robust systems to provide life-saving service in some of the harshest environments on Earth. At the start of any project, our team plays a vital role in system architecture, designing for performance, reliability, and fault tolerance, while balancing mass and cost. Included in this is the design of an FAA-approved safety system to ensure the safety of employees, customers, and bystanders. Our sophisticated flight systems also require us to build custom solutions with high performance embedded computing and high speed serial buses. To achieve Zipline’s goal of serving anyone anywhere, all aspects of a design must be successful in a wide range of real-world environments. This means that our team is responsible for designs that are robust to broad ambient temperature ranges, can survive challenging waterproofing/ingress constraints, and maintain immunity to RF and ESD threats. These are just some of the many challenges that make us excited to go to work everyday.

What You'll Do

• Engineer avionics for volume production through a full design cycle including requirements, prototype, schematic capture, layout, and validation.
• Shape the architecture of Zipline’s next generation product, making 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.
• Proactively seek out opportunities for improvement in system, vehicle, and component level design.
• Collaborate cross-functionally in all stages of development, including:
  • Architecture: fault tolerance, power, mass, thermals
  • Detailed Design: schematic capture, PCB layout, system integration, validation
  • Production: quality, failure analysis, manufacturing, cost
  • Deployment: troubleshoot field issues, develop rapid mitigations, roll learnings into future design revisions

What You'll Bring

• A degree in Electrical Engineering, Embedded Hardware Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum 5 years of design experience including: circuit analysis, schematic capture, PCB layout, packaging, and integration.
• Past success developing electronics for critical systems in fields such as aerospace, transportation, or medical devices.
• Experience with at least some of these desired:
  • Hard-switching power converters
  • Resonant power converters
  • Motor drives
  • Voltage, current, and temperature sensing analog front ends
  • Simple digital logic
  • Basic embedded communications busses (e.g. SPI, I2C, UART, CAN)
  • Higher speed communications (e.g. Ethernet, LVDS)
• Enthusiasm for working in a fast-paced, collaborative, cross-functional environment.
• 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.
• Preferred: experience with practical aspects of carrying a design into mass production. This includes optimizing for cost, manufacturability, and yields.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with at least some of these desired:
  • Hard-switching power converters
  • Resonant power converters
  • Motor drives
  • Voltage, current, and temperature sensing analog front ends
  • Simple digital logic
  • Basic embedded communications busses (e.g. SPI, I2C, UART, CAN)
  • Higher speed communications (e.g. Ethernet, LVDS)

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $150,000 - $215,000. 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!