Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Avionics at Flyzipline — South San Francisco, CA

### About Zipline

## 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.

### Voluntary Self-Identification