{"id":3463271,"url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox","title":"Mechanical Engineering Manager, Dropbox","company":{"id":15878,"name":"Zipline","domain":"zipline.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/zipline","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["South San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":195000,"max":245000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":245000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Dropbox","optional":false},{"name":"Siemens NX","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-13T15:25:50Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-15","last_verified_at":"2026-10-30T16:51:57Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":109,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":109},"description":"About Zipline\nZipline 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. \nOur 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.\nOur 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.\nWe 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.\nAbout You and The Role\nDropbox is Zipline’s customer-facing product through which partners load orders for autonomous pickup by Platform 2.\nDropbox integrates package loading and validation, mechatronics, controlled access, handoff interfaces, sensors, electronics, environmental protection, and service features. It must be intuitive for an untrained user, safe around people, reliable over high cycle counts, and capable of operating unattended in demanding environments.\nZipline is hiring a Mechanical Engineering Manager to lead the team responsible for the mechanical architecture, development, production, and field performance of Dropbox.\nYou will manage and grow a team of mechanical engineers while partnering with Industrial Design, Electrical Engineering, Embedded Software, Systems, Test, Reliability, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Deployment, Operations, and Product. You will own the current product and define the next generation required to support significantly larger deployment volumes.\nThis is a player-coach role. You will set direction, develop engineers, and remain close enough to the hardware to guide architecture, review critical analyses, and help resolve the team’s hardest technical problems.\nWhat You'll Do\nManage, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of mechanical engineers.\nHire exceptional engineers and establish clear ownership, technical direction, and execution plans.\nOwn the Dropbox mechanical architecture and roadmap from requirements through field deployment.\nLead development of the enclosure, structure, elevator, lid and access mechanisms, latches, package interfaces, droid interfaces, electronics packaging, harnessing, sealing, and service features.\nTranslate customer and system needs into mechanical requirements, interface definitions, and validation plans.\nDrive system trades across safety, reliability, user experience, throughput, installation, serviceability, manufacturability, cost, and schedule.\nEstablish system-level datum structures, GD&T, alignment schemes, and tolerance strategies.\nIntegrate mechanical design with sensing and firmware behavior for motion control, homing, access control, obstruction detection, fault handling, and service recovery.\nGuide the selection and integration of motors, actuators, transmissions, bearings, sensors, connectors, PCBAs, harnesses, and seals.\nEnsure designs account for fatigue, wear, contamination, water ingress, corrosion, thermal variation, misuse, package variation, and installation variation.\nUse first-principles analysis, hand calculations, tolerance analysis, kinematic analysis, FEA, prototypes, and testing to guide decisions.\nDrive design reviews, DFMEAs, hazard assessments, fault-tree analyses, and risk-retirement plans.\nDefine component and system testing for functionality, lifetime, environmental exposure, abuse, obstruction, motion faults, package variation, and droid handoff.\nLead Dropbox through prototype builds, engineering validation, design validation, production validation, and volume ramp.\nPartner with NPI, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, and suppliers to achieve scalable, high-yield production.\nDrive DFM and DFA across sheet metal, injection-molded plastics, machined parts, castings, extrusions, seals, and electromechanical assemblies.\nLead responses to test, production, and field failures, including containment, root cause, corrective action, and permanent resolution.\nUse field reliability, service, and telemetry data to prioritize product improvements.\nReduce failure rates, recovery time, maintenance burden, installation complexity, and total cost of ownership.\nWhat You'll Bring\nPast success managing and developing an excellent team of mechanical engineers.\nA record of hiring strong engineers and creating a culture of ownership, urgency, and technical rigor.\nExperience leading first-of-a-kind electromechanical products from architecture through production and field deployment.\nSignificant direct technical contributions to mechanical product architecture earlier in your career.\nDeep experience with mechanisms, structures, actuators, sensors, electronics integration, and high-cycle moving assemblies.\nStrong fundamentals in hand calculations, GD&T, tolerance analysis, materials, fatigue, wear, bolted joints, and FEA.\nExperience designing around PCBAs, harnesses, connectors, motors, transmissions, sensors, and embedded control systems.\nExperience with sheet metal, injection-molded plastics, machined parts, castings, extrusions, seals, and relevant high-volume processes.\nDemonstrated success with DFM, DFA, supplier engagement, inspection planning, and manufacturing ramp.\nExperience defining validation plans and demonstrating safety, reliability, environmental, and lifetime requirements.\nExperience resolving complex production or field failures through disciplined root-cause analysis.\nStrong customer judgment and an understanding that usability, serviceability, and fault recovery are engineering requirements.\nExcellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills.\nNice to Have\nExperience with outdoor, unattended, or customer-facing electromechanical products.\nExperience in robotics, industrial automation, material handling, automotive, appliances, kiosks, or similar systems.\nExperience designing powered mechanisms that operate around untrained users.\nExperience with environmental sealing, drainage, condensation, corrosion, and wide-temperature operation.\nExperience using fleet telemetry or reliability data to improve mechanical hardware.\nExperience with Siemens NX.\nAerospace-, automotive-, medical-, or similarly rigorous validation experience.\nWhat Else You Need to Know\nThe starting cash range for this role is $195,000 - $245,000. 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.\nZipline 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.\nWe 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!\nVoluntary Self-Identification\nFor government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.\nAs set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8946,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Retirement plans","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Drones & UAVs","Delivery","Logistics"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-29T14:36:18Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 63 · green card filings: 13","filings_12m":63,"filings_prev_12m":47,"green_card_filings_12m":13,"median_offered_wage_usd":170658,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":12,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.424,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":108,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":245000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T17:03:47Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":5422,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":15878},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=15878"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fzipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fzipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fzipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/zipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fzipline-mechanical-engineering-manager-dropbox"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3463271}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"zipline.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3463271},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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