Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Avionics
Zipline · San Francisco, United States · 1mo ago
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.