Electrical Engineer - Ground Systems

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

Zipline

South San Francisco, California, USA

On-site

Posted March 27, 2026

Job Description

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 the Role

The Ground Systems team is responsible for developing the components to support the aircraft landing, charging, loading and launching. We are looking for an Electrical Engineer with a strong foundation in EE design and an excellent grasp of electronics development, processes, and tools. In this role, you will develop hardware for our next generation ground systems which involves designing electronics in at least one of the following fields: Microprocessor, high-speed communication, GNSS, brushless DC motor drive, power supply, battery charger and more.

These components are at the core of enabling autonomous takeoff and landing for our fleet of next generation aircraft and seamless integration with our shipper sites that will enable Zipline’s impact to expand from 100,000 deliveries/year to 100 million across the globe. In addition, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with world class engineers across all disciplines and experience levels. Zipline values personal development highly and encourages an environment of continuous learning and mentorship.

The Ground Systems team encounters many challenges when designing robust systems to provide life-saving service in some of the harshest environments on Earth. At the start of any project, our team plays a vital role in system architecture, designing for performance, reliability, and fault tolerance, while balancing mass and cost. Included in this is the design of an UL compliant system to ensure the safety of employees, customers, and bystanders. Our sophisticated autonomous fleet also requires us to build custom electro-mechanical solutions with high performance embedded computing and high speed communication. To achieve Zipline’s goal of serving anyone anywhere, all aspects of a design must also be successful in a wide range of real-world environments by being robust against environmental, ESD, and EMI threats. These are just some of the many challenges that make us excited to go to work everyday.

What You’ll Do

Own the electrical design for volume production through a full design cycle including requirements, prototype, schematic capture, layout, and validation.
Making impactful design decisions daily, while working with a high level of independence.
Lead trade studies, understand competing design priorities, and provide direction and clarity for burning down risk.
Collaborate cross-functionally with reliability, mechanical, embedded, and systems engineers in all stages of development, including:

Concept: System requirement, specification
Design: Schematic capture, PCB layout, system integration
Validation: Function and reliability test
Production: DFM, design drawings, manufacturing, EOL test, certification
Deployment: Troubleshoot field issues, develop rapid mitigations, roll learnings into future design revision

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