---
title: 'Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Avionics at Zipline'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-electrical-engineer-avionics-zipline-south-san-francisco-california-86vxc68v31hs'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Avionics at Zipline 

- **Company:** Zipline 
- **Location:** South San Francisco California, United States
- **Posted:** 2026-08-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://www.zipline.com/open-roles/7931408003?gh_jid=7931408003

## 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 a Senior Avionics Electrical Engineer, you will own electrical hardware for aircraft and supporting ground systems from architecture and design through bring-up, validation, release, production ramp, and fleet support. You will work closely with electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, manufacturing, test, quality, supply-chain, and operations teams to build hardware that is safe, robust, manufacturable, and ready for global operation.

This is a hands-on role for someone who can design strong circuits, debug hard problems, and carry hardware all the way from first prototype to reliable fielded product.

## What You'll Do

- Own avionics electrical subsystems from concept through design, validation, release, production ramp, and field support.
- Design and develop PCBAs for aircraft and ground-support hardware, including digital, analog, sensing, communications, power, and control circuits.
- Create and review schematics, select components, define interfaces, guide PCB layout, and ensure designs meet electrical, mechanical, thermal, manufacturing, and operational requirements.
- Bring up new boards, write and execute validation plans, analyze test data, and drive design changes based on measured performance.
- Lead root-cause investigations for electrical issues found during bring-up, qualification, manufacturing, flight test, or field operation.
- Own corrective-action plans for fleet or production issues, including containment, investigation, design revision, release, and verification.
- Partner with firmware and software teams on hardware-software interfaces, sensor integration, communications, diagnostics, and test hooks.
- Work with mechanical engineering on packaging, connectorization, cable routing, weight, thermal constraints, environmental exposure, and serviceability.
- Collaborate with manufacturing, test, quality, and supply-chain teams to improve yield, reduce downtime, resolve production blockers, and support supplier readiness.
- Define requirements, test procedures, design documentation, release packages, and change-control records for avionics hardware.
- Support design reviews, failure reviews, and technical tradeoff decisions across reliability, performance, cost, weight, power, schedule, and manufacturability.
- Mentor other engineers and help raise the quality of electrical design, validation, debugging, and release practices across the team.

## What You'll Bring

- Minimum 5 years experience designing and releasing electrical hardware for products that have shipped, flown, operated in the field, or otherwise seen real-world use.
- Strong electrical engineering fundamentals across analog, digital, mixed-signal, power, sensing, and communication circuits.
- Experience designing PCBAs, including schematic capture, component selection, design reviews, layout guidance, board bring-up, and design verification.
- Ability to debug complex electrical issues using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power supplies, electronic loads, protocol analyzers, and other lab equipment.
- Experience writing and executing test plans for design validation, qualification, production test, or reliability investigations.
- Strong root-cause analysis skills and the ability to move from ambiguous symptoms to clear technical conclusions and practical corrective actions.
- Working knowledge of PCB layout tradeoffs, signal integrity, power integrity, grounding, EMI/EMC, thermal behavior, and manufacturability.
- Ability to collaborate across electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, manufacturing, operations, quality, and supply-chain teams.
- Strong ownership instincts: you can drive a design or issue from unclear starting point to released, verified solution.
- Clear communication and documentation habits, especially when decisions affect safety, reliability, production, or fleet operations.
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

## Nice to Have

- Experience with 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 designing for weight, power consumption, thermal limits, vibration, shock, EMI/EMC, environmental exposure, or high-volume manufacturing.
- 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.
- Experience with CAN, UART, SPI, I2C, Ethernet, GNSS, radios, motor-control electronics, battery systems, or sensor interfaces.
- Familiarity with aerospace or environmental test practices such as DO-160, HALT, vibration, thermal cycling, or reliability growth testing.

What Success Looks Like

- Avionics hardware is designed, released, and ramped with clear ownership and strong technical discipline.
- Board bring-up and validation find issues early, with test results tied directly to design decisions and release readiness.
- Fleet, manufacturing, and test issues are triaged quickly, root-caused rigorously, and resolved with durable corrective actions.
- Electrical designs meet performance, reliability, manufacturability, weight, power, and serviceability goals.
- Cross-functional teams have clear documentation, status, risks, and technical decisions for the hardware you own.

What Else You Need To Know

The starting cash range for this role is $160,000 - $225,000. 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; overtime pay; 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, 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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