Mechatronics Engineer, Production Test

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 & the Role We are hiring a Mechatronics Engineer, Production Test to own electrical, functional, and automated test systems that verify Zipline aircraft, dock, delivery pod, and subassembly hardware line operates safety-critical autonomous aircraft and logistics systems that deliver medicine and essentials across varied field conditions; production test directly affects fleet uptime, field reliability, and customer deliveries. In this role you will lead end-to-end test system delivery for factory floors that support high-throughput manufacturing and rapid product iterations.

You will be expevcted to prioritize safety, traceability, and measurable improvements in yield and time-to-deploy while working in a fast-scaling production environment with direct consequences for aircraft reliability and delivery network performance.

This opening sits within our manufacturing engineering team; the exact focus will reflect your strengths and the team’s needs. This role is based at Zipline’s South San Francisco manufacturing site (onsite-first with regular floor presence); travel to other Zipline sites or vendor locations may be required for launches and validations.

What You’ll DoBuild electrical and functional testers that integrate harnessing, DAQ, sensors, actuators, power systems, safety interlocks, and mechanical fixtures.

Own production testers and calibration stations from requirements through internal or vendor build, installation, validation, release, and sustainment.

Define test coverage, pass/fail limits, golden units, GR&R, capability targets, and release criteria with design, firmware, quality, and operations partners.

Implement test automation and data pipelines for repeatable execution, logging, MES/MFG integration, and production dashboards.

Troubleshoot PCBA failures, tester instability, fixture issues, software defects, and product/tester correlation failures on the factory floor.

Improve first-pass yield, false-fail rate, cycle time, uptime, and utilization; set targets and report progress monthly.

Coordinate vendor builds, FAT/SAT, qualification, training, calibration, spares, and change control.

Standardize tester…