Test Engineering Manager - Powertrain (Multiple Roles)

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

Zipline

South San Francisco, California

Remote

Posted April 1, 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 YOU AND THE ROLE

We are seeking two Hardware Test Engineering Manager roles to lead the strategy, development, and execution of hardware validation and test activities across the product lifecycle. These roles require hands-on technical expertise and people leadership, ensuring high-quality, reliable hardware products delivered on schedule. The two roles within Powertrain team are:

Energy and Power: batteries, cells, charging, power distribution, energy safety
Electric Drivetrain: electric propulsion, motors, propellers, electromechanical systems.

You will be responsible for leading a team of multidisciplinary engineers, developing world-class test methods, equipment, and execution of hardware testing. This role is for the full lifecycle of hardware development, from performance testing to find the limits of the hardware, system-level performance tests, durability and environmental survivability, and the development of automated hardware testing for production line applications.

You will act as a player-coach who has an area of expertise in either batteries or electric propulsion, and is comfortable providing strategic vision as well as being in the weeds of the team's designs, builds, analysis and reviews. You will help Zipline evolve its hardware testing philosophy and capacity, and grow the team in the process. The success of this team is vital to the success of Zipline overall.

This effort will enable Zipline’s impact to expand from 100’s of thousand deliveries/year to 100’s of millions in a wide variety of environmental conditions around the world.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Lead a team of test engineers and specialists responsible for powertrain testing.
This group is responsible for:

Demonstrating the ultimate capability of powertrain hardware, including batteries, cells, power distribution units, electric propulsion units, and electromechanical actuators.
Contributing to the overall intuition of the engineering team through close involvement in design reviews, prototyping, and testing of components and assemblies.
Designing, building, operating, purchasing and maintaining test equipment.

Developing strategies and test campaigns to efficiently evaluate function, reliability and safety of critical components and assemblies.
Developing calculations for damage and fatigue to replicate flight conditions in ground-based test methods.
Root causing failures alongside design engineers and working to create elegant solutions.
Recreate system-level effects including off-nominal scenarios and safety tests.
Raise the bar for the existing team