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Mechanical Engineering Manager, Dropbox

South San Francisco, California, USA

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

Dropbox is Zipline’s customer-facing product through which partners load orders for autonomous pickup by Platform 2.

Dropbox integrates package loading and validation, mechatronics, controlled access, handoff interfaces, sensors, electronics, environmental protection, and service features. It must be intuitive for an untrained user, safe around people, reliable over high cycle counts, and capable of operating unattended in demanding environments.

Zipline is hiring a Mechanical Engineering Manager to lead the team responsible for the mechanical architecture, development, production, and field performance of Dropbox.

You will manage and grow a team of mechanical engineers while partnering with Industrial Design, Electrical Engineering, Embedded Software, Systems, Test, Reliability, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Deployment, Operations, and Product. You will own the current product and define the next generation required to support significantly larger deployment volumes.

This is a player-coach role. You will set direction, develop engineers, and remain close enough to the hardware to guide architecture, review critical analyses, and help resolve the team’s hardest technical problems.

What You'll Do

  • Manage, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of mechanical engineers.
  • Hire exceptional engineers and establish clear ownership, technical direction, and execution plans.
  • Own the Dropbox mechanical architecture and roadmap from requirements through field deployment.
  • Lead development of the enclosure, structure, elevator, lid and access mechanisms, latches, package interfaces, droid interfaces, electronics packaging, harnessing, sealing, and service features.
  • Translate customer and system needs into mechanical requirements, interface definitions, and validation plans.
  • Drive system trades across safety, reliability, user experience, throughput, installation, serviceability, manufacturability, cost, and schedule.
  • Establish system-level datum structures, GD&T, alignment schemes, and tolerance strategies.
  • Integrate mechanical design with sensing and firmware behavior for motion control, homing, access control, obstruction detection, fault handling, and service recovery.
  • Guide the selection and integration of motors, actuators, transmissions, bearings, sensors, connectors, PCBAs, harnesses, and seals.
  • Ensure designs account for fatigue, wear, contamination, water ingress, corrosion, thermal variation, misuse, package variation, and installation variation.
  • Use first-principles analysis, hand calculations, tolerance analysis, kinematic analysis, FEA, prototypes, and testing to guide decisions.
  • Drive design reviews, DFMEAs, hazard assessments, fault-tree analyses, and risk-retirement plans.
  • Define component and system testing for functionality, lifetime, environmental exposure, abuse, obstruction, motion faults, package variation, and droid handoff.
  • Lead Dropbox through prototype builds, engineering validation, design validation, production validation, and volume ramp.
  • Partner with NPI, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, and suppliers to achieve scalable, high-yield production.
  • Drive DFM and DFA across sheet metal, injection-molded plastics, machined parts, castings, extrusions, seals, and electromechanical assemblies.
  • Lead responses to test, production, and field failures, including containment, root cause, corrective action, and permanent resolution.
  • Use field reliability, service, and telemetry data to prioritize product improvements.
  • Reduce failure rates, recovery time, maintenance burden, installation complexity, and total cost of ownership.

What You'll Bring

  • Past success managing and developing an excellent team of mechanical engineers.
  • A record of hiring strong engineers and creating a culture of ownership, urgency, and technical rigor.
  • Experience leading first-of-a-kind electromechanical products from architecture through production and field deployment.
  • Significant direct technical contributions to mechanical product architecture earlier in your career.
  • Deep experience with mechanisms, structures, actuators, sensors, electronics integration, and high-cycle moving assemblies.
  • Strong fundamentals in hand calculations, GD&T, tolerance analysis, materials, fatigue, wear, bolted joints, and FEA.
  • Experience designing around PCBAs, harnesses, connectors, motors, transmissions, sensors, and embedded control systems.
  • Experience with sheet metal, injection-molded plastics, machined parts, castings, extrusions, seals, and relevant high-volume processes.
  • Demonstrated success with DFM, DFA, supplier engagement, inspection planning, and manufacturing ramp.
  • Experience defining validation plans and demonstrating safety, reliability, environmental, and lifetime requirements.
  • Experience resolving complex production or field failures through disciplined root-cause analysis.
  • Strong customer judgment and an understanding that usability, serviceability, and fault recovery are engineering requirements.
  • Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills.

Nice to Have

  • Experience with outdoor, unattended, or customer-facing electromechanical products.
  • Experience in robotics, industrial automation, material handling, automotive, appliances, kiosks, or similar systems.
  • Experience designing powered mechanisms that operate around untrained users.
  • Experience with environmental sealing, drainage, condensation, corrosion, and wide-temperature operation.
  • Experience using fleet telemetry or reliability data to improve mechanical hardware.
  • Experience with Siemens NX.
  • Aerospace-, automotive-, medical-, or similarly rigorous validation experience.

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!

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