Lead Engineering Technician

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's next-generation aircraft and supporting hardware must be built, integrated, validated, recovered, and improved while products, processes, and configurations are still evolving. Your team turns engineering intent into safe, traceable hardware that enables validation, production, remanufacturing, and reliable field operations. You will lead and work alongside Engineering Technicians on the build floor. Your role will be to own build readiness, daily execution priorities, technical blocker resolution, recovery quality, and technician capability so the team can deliver high-quality hardware consistently. What You'll Do Lead hands-on electromechanical builds, integration, validation, troubleshooting, rework, and recovery of aircraft and supporting hardware. Directly manage, hire, onboard, schedule, coach, review, and develop a team of Engineering Technicians. Set daily priorities and allocate technician capacity across prototype, NPI, validation, production support, remanufacturing, and field-operations work. Resolve competing execution needs by coordinating cross-functional tradeoffs and escalating decisions when needed. Confirm build readiness by ensuring required hardware, tooling, documentation, materials, and configurations are available before work begins. Partner with Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Validation, Production, Supply Chain, and Field Operations to remove technical and execution blockers. Maintain safety, craftsmanship, quality, documentation, traceability, and configuration-control standards; use build-floor feedback to improve tooling, methods, work instructions, manufacturability, and recovery processes. What You'll Bring 6+ years building complex electromechanical hardware in UAV, aerospace, robotics, automotive, manufacturing, or a similar hardware environment. Experience leading technicians or managing technical teams supporting prototype, NPI, validation, production, or hardware recovery work. Strong hands-on troubleshooting across mechanical, electrical, test, and integrated hardware systems. Experience building and integrating complex assemblies using wiring, soldering, composites, machining, fixtures, test equipment, and validation tools. Ability to interpret mechanical drawings, electrical schematics, BOMs, work instructions, and technical documentation. Ability to prioritize competing hardware work, mak…