Mechanical Design Engineer - Droid SMI

• BS or MS in Mechanical Engineering, Product Design Engineering, or a related field, with 4+ years of hands-on experience delivering physical products to production.
• A track record of owning at least one complex subassembly or full product end-to-end - from requirements through concept, prototype, validation, tooling, and production.
• Real experience collaborating with industrial designers on a consumer-visible or user-facing product, and a genuine appreciation for what ID brings to the table.
• Demonstrated CAD fluency for system-level ownership - we use Siemens NX; strong Creo, SolidWorks, or CATIA experience translates too.
• Strong fundamentals: load estimation, hand calcs, tolerance analysis, FEA, GD&T, and clean CAD practices.
• Practical knowledge of the manufacturing methods we use on the droid — injection molding, thermoplastic and thermoset composites, EPP foam molding, stamping, CNC machining, and the tooling that goes with them.
• Hands-on prototyping instincts - you're comfortable in a machine shop, at a 3D printer, and building a first article with your own hands before it goes to a supplier.
• The judgment to know when to iterate, when to freeze, and when the design is telling you something the requirements got wrong.

• Prior work on a consumer-visible hardware product where industrial design was a first-class stakeholder
• Experience designing test fixtures, assembly aids, or end-of-line testers alongside the products they support
• Experience carrying a design through tooling kickoff, T0 samples, and production ramp at a contract manufacturer
• Familiarity with electronics integration - flex circuit routing, PCB mounting, thermal control, connectors, sealing
• Experience with high-cycle mechanical reliability and design-for-reliability practices
• Prior work in drone, robotics, automotive, medical device, or consumer electronics NPI

The droid is the delivery container at the heart of our delivery system. It's what detaches from the aircraft on a tether, descends 300 feet, and places your order on a driveway. It is also the part of Zipline that our customers actually see, hold, and interact with, which makes it one of the most demanding products we build. It has to be beautiful, cheap, quiet, weatherproof, thermally stable, and reliable for tens of thousands of flight cycles.

We're designing EV3, the next generation of the droid, and we're looking for a design engineer who can own subsystems of this product end-to-end. Not just CAD, and not just a phase of the product lifecycle, but the whole thing: sitting with our industrial designers to figure out what the product should be, defining the requirements it has to meet, taking those requirements into architecture and detailed design, prototyping and iterating, and then following the design all the way through DFM, tooling, first article, and production ramp.

And then, because we're serious about scale, designing the test fixtures and assembly aids that make it possible to build and validate it consistently at rate.

You'll join a small, deeply cross-disciplinary hardware team building EV3 end-to-end.

The starting cash range for this role is $125,000 - $240,000. 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.

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!

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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.