Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer (Dropbox)

Join Zipline, a company that builds and operates autonomous delivery systems. As a Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, you will be responsible for the architecture, design, validation, production ramp, and fleet operation of critical electrical systems for our customer-facing product, Dropbox. You will work closely with various engineering teams and have a hands-on role in both detailed electrical design and system-level product outcomes.

• Ownership of critical electrical systems from architecture and component selection through detailed design, validation, production ramp, and fleet operation.
• Development of electrical architecture for power distribution, control electronics, sensors, actuators, user interfaces, communications, and service diagnostics.
• Collaboration with cross-functional teams to ensure electrical systems meet safety, reliability, power, environmental, and production requirements.
• Proven end-to-end ownership of complex electrical or electromechanical products through architecture, validation, production ramp, and field deployment
• Experience with schematic capture, PCB design reviews, component selection, tolerance analysis, and worst-case circuit analysis
• Experience designing electronics for systems containing motors, actuators, sensors, PCBAs, harnesses, connectors, and embedded controls
• Hands-on proficiency with oscilloscopes, multimeters, power analyzers, electronic loads, logic analyzers, current probes, and data-acquisition equipment
• Strong electrical engineering fundamentals across analog, digital, power, sensors, motor interfaces, embedded systems, and communications
• Knowledge of environmental protection, thermal derating, ESD, EMI/EMC, ingress, corrosion, vibration, and connector reliability
• Track record working directly with PCB, harness, component, and contract-manufacturing suppliers
• Experience debugging intermittent problems involving power, signal integrity, connectors, sensors, communications, or firmware interaction
• Ability to analyze telemetry or test data using Python, SQL, MATLAB, or equivalent tools
• Demonstrated ability to develop robust power-distribution, grounding, shielding, protection, and interconnect architectures
• Experience designing for outdoor, industrial, automotive, aerospace, robotics, appliance, or similarly demanding environments
• Experience defining verification plans, fault-injection tests, and production acceptance criteria
• Experience implementing DFM, DFT, end-of-line testing, calibration, and manufacturing controls
• Operating intensity: periodic off-hours support may be required during critical builds, test campaigns, production ramps, and field escalations
• Traits: strong technical judgment, hands-on curiosity, disciplined documentation, comfort with ambiguity, and persistence until difficult failures are understood
• Location and logistics: this role is in person in South San Francisco and includes some travel to suppliers, manufacturers, test locations, and deployment sites as needed
• Strong systems judgment and the ability to recognize when an electrical symptom originates in mechanical hardware, firmware, configuration, or field conditions
• Clear written, verbal, and visual communication, including concise documentation of architecture decisions, assumptions, interfaces, and risks
• Experience with motor-control electronics, position sensing, safety interlocks, or automated mechanisms
• Experience with functional-safety principles or electronics operating around untrained users
• Experience with batteries, solar power, or distributed low-voltage systems
• Firmware experience in C/C++ or experience debugging embedded systems at the hardware-software boundary
• Experience developing remote diagnostics, fleet-health monitoring, or automated failure-detection tools
• Experience with high-volume electromechanical products