HW Test Engineering Manager, Dropbox

Job Description

Job Description

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.

Zipline builds and operates autonomous delivery systems that move critical goods reliably and safely. Dropbox is our customer-facing package-loading product that integrates mechatronics, sensors, electronics, access control, user interaction, and environmental protection to enable untrained users to hand off packages to our droids. The Test Engineering Manager for Dropbox will lead a team that proves Dropbox is safe, reliable, and production-ready across development, qualification, and fleet deployment. You will own the test strategy, infrastructure, automation, and system-level evidence that determine whether Dropbox can scale to hundreds or thousands of sites, and you will convert field learnings into design and process changes that reduce failures in the field.

• Own end-to-end test and validation for Dropbox: define measurable success criteria, test coverage, traceability, and exit gates from prototype through production and fleet rollout.
• Lead and grow a team of test engineers: set technical standards, assign clear ownership, hire, and mentor engineers to deliver test scope on schedule.
• Translate product requirements, hazards, customer workflows, and failure modes into quantifiable test requirements and pass/fail criteria.
• Design and execute component, subsystem, and system-level tests that measure functionality, safety, reliability, lifetime, environmental exposure, misuse, packaging variation, and fault recovery.
• Build and maintain automated test stands, fixtures, instrumented rigs, DAQ, and analysis tooling to increase test throughput and repeatability.
• Define sample sizes, acceleration factors, confidence levels, and statistical acceptance criteria to produce defensible reliability evidence.
• Correlate lab and accelerated tests with production and field telemetry to validate test fidelity and update test profiles based on operational data.
• Establish regression and release-readiness testing that reliably catches hardware and software regressions before field deployment.
• Lead structured failure investigations and root-cause analysis; own corrective actions that feed into design, manufacturing, and deployment changes.
• Partner daily with Mechanical, Electrical, Embedded Software, Systems, Reliability, Manufacturing, and Operations to remove test-blockers and align release criteria.
• Deliver dashboards and metrics (coverage, MTBF, P95 latency for critical operations, failure rate per 1,000 cycles, test throughput) that make readiness and risk visible to stakeholders.
• Improve lab utilization, automation levels, and the speed at which the organization converts test evidence into product decisions.

• Proven experience managing a team of test/validation engineers for complex electromechanical or robotic products through development, qualification, production, and field deployment.
• Hands-on expertise designing test rigs, fixtures, instrumentation, DAQ, and automated test equipment; comfortable operating and iterating lab hardware.
• Strong systems judgment across mechanical hardware, sensors, electronics, embedded software, controls, and user interactions.
• Demonstrated skill with experimental design and statistical analysis: defining sample sizes, confidence intervals, acceleration models, and correlating lab-to-field performance.
• Track record driving failure investigations to a root cause and implementing design or process changes that measurably reduce field failures.
• Experience building test automation and analysis tools (Python, SQL, or equivalent) and authoring reproducible test reports and dashboards.
• Clear written and verbal communication; able to present tradeoffs and readiness recommendations to engineering and product leadership.
• Operate at the intensity required by customer-facing, unattended field systems: prioritize rapid learning while enforcing safety and reliability gates.
• Location & logistics: this is an in-person role based in South San Francisco; regular onsite presence in the lab is required. Role will include travel to suppliers, manufacturers, test sites, and deployment sites as needed.
• Must-haves: proven ownership of system-level validation for hardware+software products and demonstrated ability to scale test capabilities to support production ramp and fleet expansion.

The starting cash range for this role is $180,000 - $220,000. 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, 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!