---
title: 'Electrical Engineer, Avionics at Zipline'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/electrical-engineer-avionics-zipline-south-san-francisco-california-2scjebr1j8mz'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Electrical Engineer, Avionics at Zipline 

- **Company:** Zipline 
- **Location:** South San Francisco California, United States
- **Posted:** 2026-08-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://www.zipline.com/open-roles/7917601003?gh_jid=7917601003

## Job description

## 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

Zipline designs, manufactures, and operates autonomous delivery systems that depend on reliable avionics, sensing, communications, power, and ground-support hardware. These systems must work in the real world, at fleet scale, across changing environments, manufacturing variation, field operations, and rapid product evolution.

As an Electrical Engineer on the Avionics team, you will contribute to the design, integration, validation, and release of electrical hardware for aircraft and supporting ground systems. You will work closely with experienced electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, manufacturing, test, quality, supply-chain, and operations teams to build hardware that is safe, robust, manufacturable, and ready for real-world use.

This is a hands-on entry-level role for someone with strong electrical engineering fundamentals and practical experience from internships, co-ops, research, capstone projects, competition teams, or personal builds. You should be excited to learn quickly, work carefully in the lab, and grow into deeper subsystem ownership over time.

## What You'll Do

- Contribute to the design and development of avionics and ground-support PCBAs, including digital, analog, sensing, communications, power, and control circuits.
- Support schematic capture, component selection, interface definition, and board-level integration with guidance from experienced engineers.
- Help bring up new boards, run bench tests, collect data, and summarize results to support design validation and release decisions.
- Work with PCB layout, mechanical engineering, and firmware teams to close interface, packaging, thermal, and manufacturability issues.
- Support validation testing, troubleshooting, and root-cause investigations for issues found during bring-up, qualification, manufacturing, or flight test.
- Contribute to requirements, test procedures, design documentation, release packages, and change-control records for avionics hardware.
- Participate in design reviews and learn to evaluate tradeoffs across performance, reliability, manufacturability, weight, power, and cost.
- Work with manufacturing, test, quality, and operations teams to support prototype builds, production readiness, and fielded hardware improvements.
- Build good engineering judgment by asking questions early, documenting work clearly, and following problems through to resolution.

## What You'll Bring

- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field with 1-3 years of industry experience.
- Strong fundamentals in analog, digital, mixed-signal, power, sensing, and communication circuits.
- Hands-on experience through coursework, internships, or projects with PCBAs, schematic capture, board bring-up, electrical debugging, or hardware validation.
- Ability to use common lab equipment such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, power supplies, logic analyzers, or electronic loads.
- Ability to read schematics, datasheets, test plans, and basic layout or manufacturing documentation.
- Familiarity with structured debugging, documenting results, and communicating technical findings clearly.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, attention to detail, and a willingness to learn from feedback.
- Ability to collaborate onsite regularly with hardware, manufacturing, and test teams in South San Francisco.

## Nice to Have

- Internship or project experience in avionics, aerospace, drones, robotics, automotive electronics, satellites, or other high-reliability hardware.
- Experience with Altium Designer for schematic capture, PCB layout review, or release package generation.
- Experience with Python, MATLAB, or similar tools for test automation, data analysis, or lab-equipment control.
- Familiarity with embedded firmware development in C or C++, especially for board bring-up, diagnostics, or hardware-software integration.
- Familiarity with CAN, UART, SPI, I2C, Ethernet, GNSS, radios, power electronics, battery systems, or sensor interfaces.
- Exposure to environmental or reliability testing such as vibration, thermal cycling, or EMI/EMC-related work.

What Else You Need To Know

The starting salary for this role is $130,000 - $186,000. Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.

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! Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

## About Zipline 

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zipline is an American robotics company that operates the world’s largest autonomous drone delivery service, transporting medical supplies, food, and retail goods across multiple continents.
- **Entity Type**: Private (early-stage startup)
- **Headquarters**: South San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: March 2014
- **Founders**: Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oksenhorn, William Hetzler

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Logistics / Drone delivery
- **Target customers**: B2B (healthcare systems, governments, retailers like Walmart and Chipotle) and B2C (home delivery via the Zipline app)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Build the first logistics system that serves all people equally” – initially focused on saving lives by delivering blood and medicine to remote communities, now expanded to instant urban delivery.

## Products & Services
- **Platform 1 (P1)**: Long-range, rural delivery drone. Carries up to 4 lbs, roundtrip range 120+ miles, cruise speed 60 mph. Uses parachute delivery. Designed for enterprise, government, and healthcare supply chains.
- **Platform 2 (P2)**: Urban/suburban home delivery drone. Carries up to 8 lbs, service radius 10 miles (or 24 miles one way), cruise speed 70 mph. Delivers via a tether from up to 300 ft, allowing contactless drop-off. Launched in 2025 and used for food, retail, and health products.
- **Zipping Points**: Modular ground stations that allow businesses to load orders onto drones without specialized equipment.
- **FlightIQ**: Advanced onboard autonomy and perception suite for safe navigation and delivery.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: 2 million commercial deliveries completed (as of January 2026) and 130 million autonomous miles flown.[wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company))[zipline-fact-sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in available sources. Key partners include Walmart, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Crumbl, Blaze Pizza, Wendy’s, and many other restaurant brands. In healthcare, works with more than 5,000 hospitals and health centers.
- **Growth Signals**: Expanded into urban home delivery in 2025 (P2) with service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas and 20+ communities in Dallas-Fort Worth. Obtained FAA authorization for beyond visual line of sight operations. Reports 56% decrease in maternal mortality and 66% decrease in missed malaria treatments in served regions.[zipline-fact-sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Autonomous drone fleet**: One of the world’s largest commercial deployments of autonomous robots, with custom software running on Nvidia chips.
- **FAA approval**: All operations and aircraft are FAA-approved, including pioneering use of Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM).
- **Quieter than road vehicles**: Drones hover high and descend on a tether, generating noise lower than common neighborhood sounds.
- **Extensive testing**: One of the largest aviation testing campaigns, with operations in rain, wind, and storms.
- **Integrated logistics platform**: Beyond drones, Zipline provides warehousing, inventory management, cold chain storage, and fulfillment software.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the Platform 2 urban delivery network across the U.S., particularly through partnerships with major retailers and restaurants.
- Deepening healthcare impact by expanding into new countries and product categories (prescriptions, groceries, convenience items).
- Continuing to reduce delivery times and environmental footprint (0 emissions per delivery, compared to automotive delivery).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture values**: Ownership & Accountability, Direct Feedback & Communication, Continuous Improvement, Customer Obsession, Servant Leadership (as stated on careers page). Emphasis on “Make it matter” and mission-driven work.[careers](https://www.zipline.com/careers)
- **Work environment**: Headquartered in South San Francisco with hardware and software teams. The company assembles its drones in America. Likely on-site given the hardware focus; remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated.
- **Impact**: Opportunity to work on life-saving technology (60,000+ lives saved) and shape the future of instant logistics.
- **Engineering culture**: Build and iterate on autonomous systems, airspace deconfliction, and large-scale robotics deployments.

## Sources
1. [Zipline Careers](https://www.zipline.com/careers)
2. [Zipline Homepage](https://www.zipline.com/)
3. [About Zipline](https://www.zipline.com/about)
4. [Zipline Fact Sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)
5. [Wikipedia - Zipline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company))
6. [Greenhouse Careers Page](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/flyzipline)

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