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 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, firmware, autonomy interfaces, and environmental protection so untrained users can hand off packages to our drones.
Every partner site is different. Window dimensions, building geometry, awnings, utilities, traffic, pedestrian access, permitting constraints, employee workflows, and delivery volume all affect how Dropbox can be configured and operated. Product behavior must account for these real-world constraints without creating an unmanageable number of hardware variants or site-specific exceptions.
As a Senior Product Integration Engineer, you will be the technical bridge between partners, Product, Hardware, Firmware, Systems, Safety, and Deployments. You will convert partner workflows and building conditions into clear product requirements, configuration rules, interface definitions, and product behaviors.
You will work directly with partners during site exploration and pilots, define what must be true for Dropbox to integrate successfully, and provide Deployment teams with the information required to survey, design, install, commission, and support sites. You will also work closely with Firmware to define state machines, interlocks, fault responses, recovery behavior, configuration parameters, and telemetry.
This is a hands-on individual-contributor role for someone who can move between a partner’s kitchen or drive-through, a building drawing, a system state diagram, a safety analysis, and a firmware design review. Success means Dropbox behaves safely and predictably, meets throughput needs, and can be deployed repeatedly without site-specific engineering heroics.
What You'll Do
- Own technical product integration for Dropbox across partner workflows, building interfaces, product configuration, firmware behavior, and deployment readiness.
- Work directly with partners to understand employee workflows, peak operations, site-development practices, construction constraints, and operational priorities.
- Lead site fit studies using drawings, surveys, CAD envelopes, representative hardware, and on-site observations.
- Translate partner needs into product requirements without allowing individual requests to create unnecessary configurations or compromise the product architecture.
- Define supported site archetypes and configurations, including wall-adjacent, freestanding, indoor-loading, window-integrated, mirrored, high-throughput, and drive-through installations.
- Determine which partner scenarios are supported by the standard product, require an approved configuration, need a site modification, or should not be supported.
- Define building and site constraints such as rough openings, sill heights, wall thickness, ground conditions, structural interfaces, mast clearances, awnings, facade obstructions, drainage, utilities, vehicle envelopes, pedestrian zones, and service access.
- Develop and maintain authoritative partner-integration packages including space claims, keep-out volumes, interface drawings, window specifications, vendor cut sheets, utility requirements, configuration rules, and site acceptance criteria.
- Provide Deployment teams with survey requirements, installation inputs, configuration instructions, commissioning steps, and technical escalation criteria.
- Ensure mechanical installation, electrical connection, surveying, firmware configuration, and software commissioning are represented in one complete deployment workflow.
- Partner with Deployment Engineering to make installation and commissioning safe, repeatable, and executable without continuous support from the product-development team.
- Lead technical engagement for early partner pilots and use field observations to identify product, workflow, and configuration changes.
- Define the Dropbox concept of operations across loading, validation, waiting, droid approach, seating, handoff, recovery, service, and downtime.
- Work with Firmware engineers to develop clear, testable state machines and product behavior for nominal, degraded, and faulted operation.
- Define behavior for access control, window and vehicle interlocks, human presence, homing, interrupted motion, obstructions, sensor disagreement, power loss, communication loss, configuration errors, and service recovery.
- Ensure product states, fault reasons, configuration, and recovery actions are visible in telemetry and understandable to operators, Deployment, and field-support teams.
- Define how site configuration, window type, loading mode, sensors, and operating speeds, is represented, validated, and controlled in software.
- Own cross-functional interface definitions among Dropbox, the building, partner users, packages, droids, cloud systems, and deployment tooling.
- Translate safety analyses into product requirements, sensing strategies, operating limits, interlocks, and configuration constraints.
- Define user-centric throughput and cycle-time requirements, including loading time, machine motion, droid handoff, recovery, and high-volume site capacity.
- Quantify tradeoffs between throughput and safety, including when different site risk profiles require different speeds, sensing, traffic controls, or operating rules.
- Drive cross-functional decisions when partner experience, building compatibility, safety, throughput, reliability, cost, and schedule compete.
- Define verification and acceptance evidence for new site types, product behaviors, and configurations.
- Use pilots, deployment feedback, field incidents, and telemetry to improve product requirements and reduce installation exceptions, failed pickups, downtime, and field escalations.
- Maintain clear decision records, interface-control documents, configuration matrices, state diagrams, and deployment guidance.
What You'll Bring
- Proven experience integrating complex electromechanical, robotic, industrial-automation, or autonomous systems into real customer environments.
- Experience translating customer workflows and ambiguous field needs into clear technical requirements and scalable product decisions.
- Strong systems judgment across mechanical hardware, sensors, electronics, firmware, software, controls, and human interaction.
- Experience defining concepts of operation, interface-control documents, state machines, fault behavior, and system-level requirements.
- Ability to read building plans, site surveys, mechanical drawings, electrical diagrams, layouts, and system architecture documentation.
- Experience evaluating physical constraints such as structures, clearances, utilities, traffic, service access, installation sequencing, and environmental exposure.
- Experience partnering with firmware teams to define observable, testable, and recoverable product behavior.
- Demonstrated ability to reason about safety hazards and translate mitigations into hardware, sensing, software, or site requirements.
- Ability to model throughput, cycle time, resource contention, and operational edge cases.
- Experience leading technical discussions with customers or partners while maintaining clear product boundaries.
- Ability to produce precise technical packages that Deployment and construction teams can execute.
- Strong written, verbal, and visual communication, including diagrams, configuration tables, interface drawings, and decision documents.
- Comfort working at deployment sites, observing workflows, inspecting physical conditions, and resolving integration questions directly.
- Location and logistics: this role is in person in South San Francisco and includes travel to partner, supplier, test, and deployment sites as needed.
- Periodic off-hours or travel support may be required during pilots, critical deployments, and field escalations.
- Traits: high technical curiosity, customer empathy, decisive engineering judgment, comfort with ambiguity, and discipline in separating product requirements from one-off requests.
What Success Looks Like
- Deployment teams receive complete and accurate information early enough to design and install sites without repeated engineering escalation.
- A small number of controlled Dropbox configurations successfully cover the majority of partner and building scenarios.
- Partner requirements and site constraints are identified before they cause redesign, permitting delay, construction rework, or operational disruption.
- Dropbox state machines and fault behavior are safe, predictable, testable, observable, and recoverable.
- Safety and throughput requirements are reflected consistently in product architecture, firmware, configuration, and site design.
- New partner integrations move from exploration to a supported technical solution faster and with fewer unresolved assumptions.
- Field and partner learnings produce measurable reductions in installation exceptions, failed operations, downtime, and service burden.
What Else You Need To Know
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!
