Products Mechanical Design Engineer

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.

The New Products team invents Zipline’s next generation of systems. We’re looking for exceptional mechanical designers to develop the lightweight structures and precision mechanisms that enable entirely new aircraft capabilities.

You thrive in ambiguity and enjoy creating hardware that has never existed before. Whether your expertise is in composite structures, mechanisms, or both, you combine strong engineering fundamentals with a hands‑on approach to rapidly turn ideas into reliable hardware. You are comfortable moving between concept generation, analysis, CAD, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing, always balancing performance, weight, reliability, manufacturability, cost, and schedule.

You have a track record of solving difficult engineering problems through first-principles thinking, rapid experimentation, and sound technical judgment.

• Own end-to-end mechanical subsystem delivery for assigned scope (examples: wing/center body structure, landing/release mechanisms, payload bay interfaces, or actuation systems) from concept through production release and field deployment.
• Translate mission requirements (mass budget, MTBF targets, operational duty cycles, environmental exposure, and turnaround time) into concrete designs, CAD, tolerance stacks, and verification plans.
• Produce and release drawings, GD&T, BOMs, and supplier specifications; coordinate part qualification, change control, and supplier handoffs to manufacturing partners.
• Drive test campaigns: design test fixtures, lead lab and flight-test instrumentation, execute structural and mechanism validation, collect data, and close failure modes against defined acceptance criteria.
• Use first-principles analysis and FEA to set margins, predict loads and fatigue life, and iterate designs to meet quantified targets (mass, stiffness, life, and safety factors).
• Rapidly prototype and iterate in-shop: build assemblies, lead bench and environmental tests, and convert validated prototypes into producible designs with documented producibility improvements.
• Collaborate daily with aerodynamics, structures, controls/autonomy, flight test, manufacturing, and operations teams; own cross-functional tradeoffs and be the mechanical authority in design reviews.
• Deliver measurable outcomes: reduce subsystem mass within specified range, demonstrate target MTBF or cycle life in test, close validation test plans to signoff, and achieve on‑time drawing release for production runs.

• Required:
  
  5+ years designing mechanical systems for aerospace, robotics, automotive, or similarly demanding hardware programs, with direct experience moving hardware from prototype to production.
• Required:
  
  Demonstrated hands‑on experience with composite or metallic structural design and/or precision mechanisms (laminates/bonded joints, load path design, bearings, linkages, latches, or actuation systems). Provide concrete examples of subsystems you owned.
• Required:
  
  Proficiency in CAD (NX, Solid Works, or equivalent), GD&T, FEA workflow for structural substantiation, and familiarity with test methods for fatigue, environmental, and life testing.
• Required:
  
  Experience producing production drawings, BOMs, supplier specs, and participating in supplier qualification and change‑control processes.
• Required logistics:
  This role is onsite at our engineering lab/manufacturing campus with frequent hands‑on build and test work; expect regular participation in flight‑test campaigns and periodic travel (program‑dependent) to launch/field sites.
• Required traits: rigorous first‑principles problem solving,…