Manager - System Test Engineering and Operations

Skills this role screens for

About the role

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

System Test is a ultra-fast-pace team responsible for pathfinding new hardware and delivering on environmental and durability campaigns for zipline’s major hardware categories. The direct team is small and lightweight, and interacts with most departments at Zipline.

You will lead a small special-ops team of test engineers and technicians across environmental, durability, and replicated-flight testing. You will own the system-test facility roadmap and campaign portfolio, make tradeoffs on test capability and execution, and partner with hardware and flight-test teams to turn findings into hardware-release and reliability decisions.

This team, and the fast discovery of hardware faults, is core to the success of Zipline and the velocity of hardware development and deployment.

The work

What You'll Do

• Own multi-month system-test campaigns that demonstrate aircraft and major hardware through replicated flight conditions, extreme environments, and targets exceeding 20,000 cycles per aircraft.
• Hire, lead, and develop test engineers and technicians who build assets, execute campaigns, and diagnose hardware faults.
• Set the test-facility roadmap, including equipment design, procurement, custom development, aerodynamic design, and thermal design.
• Architect test plans combining vibration, wind, rain, thermal, ingress, freeze-thaw, lightning, and other environmental exposures.
• Deliver and upgrade large-scale test assets, including full-vehicle wind tunnels, walk-in thermal chambers, high-temperature/high-humidity chambers, and monsoon ingress test cells.
• Establish operating processes for simultaneous test legs and clean handoffs of tested hardware to flight-test programs.
• Drive in-house software tools for aircraft maintenance, cycle-life counting, and test planning to improve campaign execution and decision quality.
• Be extremely adaptive to new hardware, new programs, and getting first-of-its-kind hardware into testing.

Also

What You'll Bring

What Else You Need To Know

The starting cash range for this role is $170,000- $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.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.

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!

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

• Demonstrated experience leading test engineers, equipment designers, and technicians for complex hardware programs.
• Experience planning and running environmental, durability, and reliability test campaigns that inform engineering decisions.
• Strong hardware-debugging intuition and electrical troubleshooting skills for aircraft or similarly complex electromechanical systems.
• Ability to design, build, or specify custom test equipment and facility infrastructure for demanding test conditions.
• Sound judgment to prioritize test capability, campaign scope, and fault investigations across multiple hardware programs.
• Familiarity with disciplined test processes and software for hardware configuration, maintenance, data capture, and test planning.
• Adaptability when bringing new or first-of-its-kind hardware into test while maintaining rigorous evidence and safe execution.
• Excellent ability to "get unstuck" and make progress in a complex and changing environment.