About Zipline

Zipline’s mission is to provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies. We believe that where you live should never dictate whether you live. We are at the forefront of a logistics revolution, using autonomous aircraft to deliver just-in-time, life-saving medical supplies at national scale in several countries and expanding around the world. Our goal is to build a system that 500 million people depend on with their lives. If you’re up to the challenge and motivated by the responsibility that comes with building that system, read on!

About the Role

As a Reliability Engineer for Zipline’s ground systems, you’ll be responsible for setting the system-level reliability goals that each engineering team is driving toward, and providing cross-functional technical guidance to make sure we achieve those goals. You’ll be required to understand what reliability means to our customers, and translate that into actionable and testable requirements for Zipline’s ground systems, which are numerous and include the launch and recovery systems for our drones, power distribution, networking, and battery chargers. Each of these systems has an impact on the reliability of Zipline’s delivery service as a whole, and you will be responsible for defining the high-level reliability budget for these systems, and then decomposing that into a reliability allocation for each subsystem. 

To succeed in this role, you’ll need to develop a cross-functional understanding of Zipline’s technology and first-hand knowledge of the numerous challenges facing our products in the real world. At Zipline, our work is intended for the field, where patients are counting on it to function reliably every day, no exceptions. Any disconnect between engineering design and real-world reliability can have dire consequences, and your work will be one of our main defenses against that outcome. In addition to driving new designs to meet reliability targets, you’ll be expected to monitor field reliability of existing systems and incorporate those lessons into the next generation of Zipline’s products. 

What You'll Do

• Responsible for setting and achieving the reliability goals for Zipline’s ground systems, which include our launcher, recovery system, power distribution, networking, and battery chargers
• Define quantitative system-level reliability requirements, and allocate them into subsystem requirements
• Develop system-level validation test plans with a physics-of-failure approach to demonstrate lifetime reliability
• Bridge electrical, mechanical, and software disciplines by facilitating the use of design risk assessment techniques (FMEA/FMECA/HARA, etc.) at the critical moment in the design process
• Serve as a technical expert on designing for reliability 
• Influence key design decisions and concept trades for new products by applying reliability analysis to uncover risks and opportunities early in the design process
• Model expected reliability performance of the system throughout development and monitor actually reliability in the real world
• Implement lessons learned into the reliability program

What You'll Bring

• Safety critical electromechanical system experience, for example in medical, aerospace, or autonomous vehicle fields including systems/vehicle design experience
• Real-world experience delivering hardware products to customers
• Ability to solve complex multidisciplinary problems on schedule independently
• The ability to answer reliability questions using statistical data analysis techniques, even when available data may be sparse 
• Past experiences in designing systems that were resilient to harsh climatic environments, mechanical vibration, ESD, and high electrical noise
• Experience with not only fail-safe fault tolerant modes but also fail-operative modes that enable the system to continue to operate through faults
• A proven track record of setting, driving to, and achieving reliability budgets for complex systems 
• Previous experience working in an industry with high regulatory requirements for human safety
• A strong belief in Zipline’s mission to provide access to essential medical supplies for every person on the planet 

What Else You Need to Know

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!