Head of Autonomous Flight Test Engineering

The role

You will lead the Flight Test Engineering team to convert complex engineering questions into safe release evidence. You will own flight test strategy and campaigns while improving automation, data, and operating practices.

What you will do

• Lead, grow, and develop the Flight Test Engineering team.
• Own the validation strategy for aircraft, software, hardware, and operations.
• Define campaign objectives, success criteria, risk posture, and go/no-go frameworks.
• Build and oversee flight test campaigns for release-readiness evidence.
• Improve automated test infrastructure, data pipelines, and reporting.
• Choose appropriate validation modalities including flight, simulation, and ground testing.
• Partner with Flight Test Operations on site readiness and operational scalability.
• Foster a strong safety culture and ensure compliance with regulations.

Required qualifications

• 5+ years designing, developing, validating, or testing complex autonomous, robotic, aerospace, aviation, or safety-critical systems
• Experience leading flight test, system test, validation, or field test engineering teams
• Experience taking complex test campaigns from objective definition through release recommendation
• Systems-level judgment across software, embedded, electrical, mechanical, controls, operations, and regulatory constraints
• Experience building or integrating test automation, analytics tooling, data pipelines, or scalable validation systems
• Ability to lead cross-functional technical programs and communicate tradeoffs
• Comfort working in field environments
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally

Nice to have

• UAS experience is strongly preferred

Benefits

• Equity compensation
• Discretionary annual or performance bonuses
• Sales incentives
• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Paid time off

About the company

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. They design, build, and operate an autonomous logistics system to deliver critical supplies like food and medicine.