Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Dropbox

The role

You will own critical electrical systems for the Dropbox package-loading product from architecture through field deployment. This role involves designing power distribution, sensors, PCBAs, and wiring harnesses for autonomous delivery systems.

What you will do

• Own critical Dropbox electrical systems from requirements and architecture through production release and field deployment.
• Develop electrical architecture for power distribution, control electronics, sensors, actuators, user interfaces, communications, and service diagnostics.
• Translate product behavior, safety analyses, environmental conditions, mechanical interfaces, and field workflows into electrical requirements.
• Define electrical success metrics such as power consumption, sensing coverage, fault-detection performance, environmental margin, production yield, and field reliability.
• Select and integrate sensors, motors, actuators, motor drivers, power supplies, converters, protection devices, connectors, harnesses, and communications interfaces.
• Design or guide the development of PCBAs, schematics, layouts, cables, wiring harnesses, interconnects, and electrical assembly documentation.
• Own power budgets, grounding and shielding strategy, connector architecture, current-carrying margins, thermal derating, and protection coordination.
• Design for electrical faults including overcurrent, short circuit, reverse polarity, overvoltage, undervoltage, brownouts, electrostatic discharge, connection errors, and loss of communication.
• Partner with Safety and Systems engineers to ensure electrical hazards are controlled.
• Work closely with Mechanical Engineering on electronics packaging, cable routing, connector access, environmental sealing, thermal management, strain relief, and serviceability.

Required qualifications

• Proven end-to-end ownership of complex electrical or electromechanical products through architecture, validation, production ramp, and field deployment.
• Strong electrical engineering fundamentals across analog, digital, power, sensors, motor interfaces, embedded systems, and communications.
• Experience designing electronics for systems containing motors, actuators, sensors, PCBAs, harnesses, connectors, and embedded controls.
• Demonstrated ability to develop robust power-distribution, grounding, shielding, protection, and interconnect architectures.
• Experience with schematic capture, PCB design reviews, component selection, tolerance analysis, and worst-case circuit analysis.
• Hands-on proficiency with oscilloscopes, multimeters, power analyzers, electronic loads, logic analyzers, current probes, and data-acquisition equipment.
• Experience debugging intermittent problems involving power, signal integrity, connectors, sensors, communications, or firmware interaction.
• Experience designing for outdoor, industrial, automotive, aerospace, robotics, appliance, or similarly demanding environments.
• Knowledge of environmental protection, thermal derating, ESD, EMI/EMC, ingress, corrosion, vibration, and connector reliability.
• Experience defining verification plans, fault-injection tests, and production acceptance criteria.
• Track record working directly with PCB, harness, component, and contract-manufacturing suppliers.
• Experience implementing DFM, DFT, end-of-line testing, calibration, and manufacturing controls.

Nice to have

• Experience with motor-control electronics, position sensing, safety interlocks, or automated mechanisms.
• Experience with batteries, solar power, or distributed low-voltage systems.
• Experience with functional-safety principles or electronics operating around untrained users.
• Experience developing remote diagnostics, fleet-health monitoring, or automated failure-detection tools.
• Firmware experience in C/C++ or experience debugging embedded systems at the hardware-software boundary.
• Experience with high-volume electromechanical products.

Benefits

• In office meals
• Subsidized medical, dental and vision insurance
• Monthly cellphone stipend
• Wellness stipend

About the company

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