Mechanical Test Equipment Design Engineer, Crash Safety
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 & the Role
Zipline builds autonomous delivery aircraft and ground systems that operate daily in demanding field environments. Safe products begin with rigorous validation. As a Mechanical Test Equipment Design Engineer focused on Crash Safety, you will develop the custom equipment that enables engineers to evaluate structural integrity, crashworthiness, battery safety, and failure modes under extreme loading conditions.
The Battery & Power Electronics team is responsible for ensuring our energy storage systems remain safe throughout their lifecycle—including impact, crush, abuse, vibration, thermal, and post-crash events. You will design and build robust mechanical test equipment that reproduces these conditions safely, accurately, and repeatably, accelerating product development while generating the engineering evidence needed to make confident design decisions.
This role is open to engineers at all levels. Responsibilities and technical scope will be matched to your experience and demonstrated ability, with opportunities to grow from owning individual fixtures and mechanisms to leading the architecture of complex validation systems and laboratory infrastructure.
What You'll Do
Own end-to-end development of crash safety equipment from requirements → concept → design → fabrication → commissioning → validation → continuous improvement.
- Design and develop custom mechanical test equipment supporting impact, crush, penetration, drop, abuse, fire, vibration, and structural testing of batteries and aircraft hardware.
- Design structural frames, fixtures, reaction structures, containment systems, mounting interfaces, and mechanisms capable of safely supporting high-energy testing.
- Develop systems utilizing hydraulic, pneumatic, servo-electric, and mechanical actuation to apply controlled static and dynamic loading.
- Perform engineering analyses including hand calculations, tolerance stacks, bolted joint design, load path analysis, FEA, fatigue assessments, and failure mode evaluations to ensure equipment performance and operator safety.
- Produce CAD assemblies, detailed drawings, GD&T, bills of materials, and manufacturing documentation for fabricated and machined assemblies.
- Design equipment with operator safety as a primary requirement, incorporating guarding, interlocks, energy isolation, debris containment, fire mitigation, and ergonomic considerations.
- Partner with electrical, controls, and software engineers to integrate instrumentation, sensors, data acquisition, and automation into mechanical test systems.
- Build, commission, troubleshoot, validate, and continuously improve laboratory equipment to maximize safety, repeatability, throughput, and maintainability.
- Support crash safety, abuse, and structural validation campaigns by rapidly developing new test capability and modifying existing equipment.
- Work closely with Mechanical Design, Reliability, Systems Engineering, Manufacturing, Integration & Test, and Safety teams to translate validation requirements into practical engineering solutions.
- Lead supplier engagement for fabricated equipment, machined components, welded structures, hydraulic systems, and custom mechanical assemblies.
What You'll Bring
- Experience designing mechanical systems, structural equipment, automated machinery, manufacturing equipment, or engineering test equipment appropriate to your career level.
- Strong mechanical design skills using NX, SolidWorks, or equivalent CAD software.
- Strong engineering fundamentals including machine design, structural analysis, GD&T, tolerance analysis, hand calculations, bolted joints, fatigue, material selection, and design for manufacturing.
- Experience performing structural analysis using hand calculations and FEA.
- Familiarity with hydraulic, pneumatic, servo-electric, or other high-force actuation systems.
- Experience designing welded structures, machined assemblies, and fabricated equipment.
- Hands-on experience assembling, commissioning, troubleshooting, and improving mechanical equipment.
- Experience supporting crash, impact, abuse, structural, environmental, or durability testing is preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate across multidisciplinary engineering teams and communicate technical tradeoffs effectively.
What Else You Need To Know:
The starting cash range for this role is $130,000 - $180,000. 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; 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, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.
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.