Systems Risk & Safety Lead

South San Francisco, California, USA

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. Through our technology that includes 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.

We are looking for a System Risk & Safety Engineer to own and evolve the end‑to‑end risk and safety strategy for Zipline’s aircraft and operations. This is a senior technical leadership role with real authority: you will define what “acceptably safe” means for our systems, ensure we stay ahead of operational scale, and act as a steward of safety across engineering, operations, and the company as a whole.

We start from the risk and the safety target, not from standards. Standards and guidance inform our work, but they do not define safety. This role requires first‑principles thinking, quantitative risk ownership, and the judgment to make difficult safety and risk decisions.

This role is not advisory. You will own the quantitative safety case, drive top‑down safety analyses, and ensure learning from operations continuously feeds back into engineering priorities. Patients, partners, regulators, and the communities we serve rely on us to get this right.

• Own the quantitative safety case, including decomposition of top-level safety objectives into system requirements, allocations, and operational limitations
• Own top-down fault tree analysis for safety-related events and hazards, including budget allocation and margin tracking
• Ensure safety analyses remain valid as designs, operations, and scale evolve by monitoring current and emerging risks
• Ensure Zipline learns everything possible from test and commercial events, pulling corrective and preventive actions into engineering and operational priorities
• Grow and lead a small but mighty System Risk and Safety Engineering team

• Act as the technical owner for external safety communication, in partnership with certification, legal, and communications teams
• Proactively establish Zipline as an industry leader in safety transparency and trust
• Provide clear, technically grounded support for reactive communications in response to incidents

• BS and/or MS in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of experience delivering safety‑critical electromechanical systems into real‑world operation
• Demonstrated ownership of system‑level safety analysis and decision‑making
• Strong first‑principles reasoning in the absence of complete regulations or industry guidance
• Experience with hazard analysis techniques such as fault trees, FMEA, and risk modeling
• Comfort engaging deeply with data, models, and operational evidence when needed
• Experience in cross-functional technical leadership of safety critical autonomous systems

• Experience working at the intersection of engineering design and live operations
• Exposure to regulator‑facing safety cases or certification efforts
• Experience scaling cross-functional Safety Management Systems

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, 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!