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.
Zipline builds autonomous delivery systems that move critical goods through real-world logistics networks. Flight test provides the evidence that aircraft, software, delivery operations, docking and charging systems, and fleet capabilities are ready for commercial operations.
As Head of Flight Test Engineering, you will lead the team that converts complex engineering questions into safe, representative release evidence. You will own flight test strategy and campaigns while strengthening the automation, data, and operating practices that help Zipline learn quickly and make rigorous release decisions.
You are both a strong technical leader and a hands-on systems thinker. You should be excited to lead and grow a team while diving into test architecture, data, automation, risk assessment, and execution details. You should bring strong judgment about when to move quickly, when to invest in durable infrastructure and process, and how to balance engineering rigor with the pace required to support a rapidly evolving autonomous delivery system.
What You'll Do• Lead, grow, and develop the Flight Test Engineering team.
• Own the validation strategy for new aircraft capabilities, software releases, hardware changes, delivery operations, docking and charging systems, fleet behavior, and operational concepts.
• Define campaign objectives, success criteria, risk posture, and go/no-go frameworks with Software, Electrical, Mechanical, Controls, Autonomy, Cloud, Systems, Product, and Regulatory teams.
• Build and oversee flight test campaigns that produce clear release-readiness evidence and expand representative regression coverage across the end-to-end logistics system.
• Improve automated test infrastructure, data pipelines, anomaly detection, reporting, and correctness metrics to increase repeatability, test velocity, test capacity, and decision quality.
• Choose the appropriate validation modality—flight, simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, or ground testing—to focus flight testing on the highest-value learning.
• Partner with Flight Test Operations on site readiness, execution processes, operational scalability, and support for testing in new geographies and environments.
• Foster a strong safety culture across Flight Test Engineering and Operations, ensuring compliance with regulations and internal standards.
• 5+ years designing, developing, validating, or testing complex autonomous, robotic, aerospace, aviation, or safety-critical systems; UAS experience is strongly preferred.
• Experience leading flight test, system test, validation, or field test engineering teams while staying technically engaged.
• Experience taking complex test campaigns from objective definition through planning, execution, analysis, and release recommendation.
• Systems-level judgment across software, embedded, electrical, mechanical, controls, operations, and regulatory constraints.
• Experience building or integrating test automation, analytics tooling, data pipelines, or scalable validation systems that improve coverage and efficiency.
• Ability to lead cross-functional technical programs and communicate safety, risk, and engineering tradeoffs to engineers, operators, executives, and regulatory partners.
• Comfort working in field environments with operational teams and willingness to travel domestically and internationally for flight testing, team leadership, and test-site support.
The starting cash range for this role is $200,000-$260,000. 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, 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!
Skills Required
- 5+ years designing, developing, validating, or testing complex autonomous, robotic, aerospace, aviation, or safety-critical systems
- UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) experience
- Experience leading flight test, system test, validation, or field test engineering teams while staying technically engaged
- Experience planning and executing complex test campaigns from objective definition through execution, analysis, and release recommendation
- Systems-level judgment across software, embedded, electrical, mechanical, controls, operations, and regulatory constraints
- Experience building or integrating test automation, analytics tooling, and scalable validation systems or data pipelines
- Ability to lead cross-functional technical programs and communicate safety, risk, and engineering tradeoffs to engineers, operators, executives, and regulators
- Comfort working in field environments and willingness to travel domestically and internationally for flight testing and test-site support
Zipline Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Zipline and has not been reviewed or approved by Zipline.
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage is consistently described as comprehensive and high quality, with multiple plan choices, low out‑of‑pocket costs, and additions like HRA, One Medical, and fertility support.
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Parental & Family Support — Parental and family leave is highlighted as generous and meaningfully used, reinforcing support for major life events.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Paid time off, sick days, and holidays are portrayed as solid and broadly available, contributing to overall benefits depth.
Zipline Insights
What We Do
Zipline is the world's largest autonomous delivery network and is powered entirely by fixed-wing drones. Our fleet circles the equivalent distance of the equator every 2.5 days, and we have shipped hundreds of thousands of critical medical products across Rwanda, Ghana, and now beginning in the United States.
Why Work With Us
Zipline is the perfect intersection of super cutting-edge tech, deep social mission, and extremely compelling business case. Our small, scrappy, customer-obsessed, humble, and mission-driven team has set the bar for what is possible in the drone logistics industry globally, and has designed some incredibly elegant technology in the process.
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