Senior Electrical Reliability Engineer

Electrical Reliability Engineer

Location: South San Francisco

Team: Engineering | Hardware Reliability

About Zipline

Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world's most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda's national blood delivery network and Ghana's COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers.

The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Using robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.

About the Role

As an Electrical Reliability Engineer at Zipline, you'll bring your passion and expertise in electrical engineering to ensure our airborne systems perform safely and reliably in extreme operating environments. Your hands-on experience in RF, digital, analog, and power circuit issues will prime you to identify and resolve our most complex electrical failures and improve overall hardware lifetime. Your work will directly support our mission of delivering critical medical and commercial goods with ultra-reliable autonomous aircraft.

You'll own the end-to-end reliability lifecycle of key electrical assemblies, like our all-electric powertrain, navigation sensor suite, or harness systems, from early design through field deployment. By combining design-for-reliability principles, rigorous testing, and hands-on failure analysis, you'll play a critical role in ensuring Zipline aircraft meet the highest reliability standards.

What You'll Do

• Own the reliability strategy for safety-critical electronic subsystems, applying board-level and system-level Design-for-Reliability (DfR) and Physics-of-Failure (PoF) principles.
• Allocate and decompose system reliability requirements into actionable design-level specs.
• Lead DFMEA efforts with cross-functional teams to identify early risks and drive mitigation.
• Design and execute Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) and environmental test campaigns to validate long-term performance.
• Author test plans and procedures with clear, data-driven pass/fail criteria.
• Lead failure analysis and structured root cause investigations, from component to system-level.
• Sign off on test verification results and assess hardware readiness for flight from a reliability standpoint.
• Define operational life limits and service intervals using a combination of test data, field returns, and statistical models.

What You'll Bring

• B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering or a related discipline.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience designing and validating safety-critical electromechanical systems (e.g., aerospace, robotics, automotive, or medical devices).
• Solid understanding of schematic design and PCB layout for analog, digital, RF, and power circuits.
• Experience with non-destructive failure analysis and troubleshooting techniques.
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross-functional alignment on reliability trade-offs and technical decisions around design, supply-chain, quality, manufacturing, finance, and operations.
• Strong organizational skills with a bias toward action, ownership, and risk-based prioritization.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, tight timelines, and evolving priorities.

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $150,000-$215,000. 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.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

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!