Senior Flight Test Engineer

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

Zipline

Compensation

$130,000 - $165,000/year

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 You and The Role

Zipline is looking for a Senior Flight Test Engineer to lead comprehensive flight test campaigns and integrate automated testing infrastructure into our flight test program. Your work will help enable Zipline to continuously test, learn, and deploy improvements to our global delivery service.

In this role, you will develop a deep understanding of Zipline’s end-to-end logistics system and work closely with cross-functional partners to generate rapid insights into changes across hardware, software, and operations. Your work will serve as the final line of defense before software and hardware are deployed globally to perform critical real-world deliveries.

You’ll own system-level flight test campaigns from planning through execution and analysis. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys translating complex engineering questions into effective test programs and using data and automation to accelerate learning.

Do you enjoy designing system-level test campaigns and owning the outcome end-to-end? Are you collaborative and motivated to integrate the needs of multiple engineering teams into a unified test strategy? Are you passionate about bringing automation, tooling, and data analytics into flight testing to increase speed and insight? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

What You'll Do

Develop and execute flight test campaigns to validate aircraft performance, delivery operations, docking systems, and fleet orchestration.
Ensure flight testing is used for the highest-value learning opportunities, and recommend alternative test approaches when more efficient methods exist.
Collaborate with electrical, mechanical, and software teams to define system-level flight test objectives and success criteria.
Assess hardware and software readiness for testing and make sound judgments on risk posture and flight readiness.
Identify and remove technical and programmatic roadblocks that slow down flight testing.
Own or coordinate key aspects of flight operations, including preflight preparation, flight execution, and incident reporting.
Analyze flight test data to identify anomalies, trends, and opportunities for rapid iteration.
Track test progress and introduce new tools, processes, and workflows that enable safe and efficient testing.
Develop and integrate software tooling and automated test infrastructure to improve test precision, insight, capacity, and velocity.