Senior Motor Mechanical Design Engineer
ZiplineAbout 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
Zipline builds autonomous delivery aircraft and ground systems that operate daily in varying field conditions. You will design hardware that directly impacts flight performance, fleet reliability, manufacturability, and our ability to scale autonomous delivery around the world.
The Powertrain Engineering team is responsible for delivering high-performance propulsion systems for Zipline’s next-generation autonomous aircraft. You will own the mechanical design, analysis, and integration of electric motors and related assemblies from concept through production, balancing performance, reliability, manufacturability, thermal management, and mass efficiency.
You will lead the design of rotor-stator assemblies, housings, cooling systems, controller enclosures, and aircraft interfaces that must withstand demanding dynamic, thermal, and structural environments.
What You'll Do
- Own end-to-end mechanical delivery of electric motors and related assemblies from requirements → concept → design → analysis → prototype → validation → release → production.
- Design rotor-stator subassemblies, motor housings, cooling solutions, controller enclosures, mounting interfaces, and other propulsion hardware.
- Collaborate with electromagnetic, structural, thermal, controls, firmware, power electronics, and systems engineers to ensure successful aircraft-level integration.
- Perform and support system-level FEA/CAE and engineering analyses, including rotor dynamics, propeller interactions, motor thermals and magnetics, mounting vibration loads, transient conditions, steady-state performance, and hand calculations.
- Develop mechanical architectures that meet aircraft performance, structural, thermal, vibration, shock, waterproofing, and reliability requirements.
- Create production-ready CAD assemblies, detailed drawings, GD&T, and tolerance stack-ups for motor components and assemblies.
- Lead design-for-manufacturing and design-for-assembly activities with internal teams, suppliers, and manufacturing partners.
- Support prototyping, supplier development, validation, and high-volume production readiness for motor hardware.
- Define and execute durability and reliability test plans, including load cycling, waterproofing, mechanical shock, vibration, and thermal testing.
- Design supporting test fixtures, analyze failures and test results, and drive corrective actions through design improvements.
- Lead cost-down efforts that improve manufacturability, reduce product cost, and enable production and operations scaling.
What You'll Bring
- B.S. in Mechanical Engineering or a related field; M.S. preferred.
- 5+ years of experience designing mechanical components for electric machines, motors, or high-speed rotating equipment.
- Demonstrated ownership of complex electromechanical products through design, analysis, prototyping, validation, and production.
- Expert CAD skills and experience owning complex mechanical assemblies and production drawings. Experience with NX, CATIA, Creo, or equivalent.
- Strong engineering fundamentals, including structural and thermal FEA, he
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