Senior/Staff Field Systems Engineer – RF Systems

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. These systems depend on RF links, antennas, embedded electronics, mechanical integration, networking, and navigation software working together across aircraft, droids, docks, ground infrastructure, and operational sites.

RF-related failures rarely present as simple RF problems. A communications dropout may originate from antenna placement, mechanical damage, connector wear, power integrity, firmware timing, interference, network configuration, multipath, site geometry, or navigation behavior. Resolving these issues requires an engineer who can move across disciplinary boundaries and use field evidence to determine what is actually happening.

As a Field Systems Engineer specializing in RF Systems, you will own the investigation and permanent resolution of complex field issues involving wireless communication, navigation, and closely coupled electromechanical systems. You will combine fleet telemetry, mission logs, RF measurements, physical inspection, field experiments, and system knowledge to identify root causes and drive corrective actions into hardware, firmware, manufacturing, maintenance, and operations.

You will work across Zipline’s products and platforms wherever RF performance affects safety, reliability, availability, or operational performance.

You will additionally establish cross-company diagnostic methods, technical standards, observability strategies, and systemic improvements that prevent entire classes of field failures.

What You'll Do

Own complex RF and connectivity field issues from initial escalation through containment, root cause, corrective action, and verified fleet resolution.

Lead technical triage during high-impact field events and provide clear guidance to Operations, Maintenance, Deployment, and Engineering.

Analyze mission logs, RF telemetry, packet statistics, navigation data, hardware health, maintenance history, environmental conditions, and site configuration.

Build structured hypothesis trees that distinguish among RF, electrical, mechanical, firmware, networking, configuration, and navigation causes.

Diagnose link-margin degradation, interference, coexistence, multipath, polarization mismatch, antenna blockage, detuning, packet loss, latency, and intermittent connectivity.

Determine whether observed RF symptoms originate from antennas, cables, connectors, harnesses, grounding, shielding, power integrity, thermal conditions, mechanical integration, firmware, or network behavior.

Work across Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, RF, Embedded Firmware, Networking, Navigation, Autonomy, Reliability, Manufacturing, and Operations.

Partner with navigation and localization teams to understand how RF, GNSS, RTK, timing, telemetry, and site geometry affect system behavior.

Reproduce field failures in the lab or at representative sites using controlled experiments and fault injection.

Perform field surveys and test campaigns using spectrum analyzers, vector network analyzers, oscilloscopes, power meters, network diagnostics, packet captures, and other appropriate instrumentation.

Develop link budgets, measurement plans, acceptance criteria, and test methods that connect analytical expectations to field performance.

Inspect and troubleshoot antennas, radios, RF cables, connectors, PCBAs, harnesses, enclosures, radomes, grounds, shields, and mechanical mounting interfaces.

Assess the effects of structural materials, tolerances, assembly variation, contamination, water ingress, corrosion, vibration, wear, and field damage on RF performance.

Create rapid containment plans that safely restore operation while permanent corrective actions are developed.

Drive permanent fixes through antenna or hardware changes, firmware behavior, configuration updates, manufacturing controls, maintenance procedures, detection algorithms, or operational changes.

Verify corrective actions with controlled testing and fleet data, then monitor recurrence to confirm the issue is closed.

Develop Python, SQL, or equivalent tools to analyze fleet-scale telemetry, identify population trends, and separate isolated failures from systemic problems.

Build automated diagnostics, alerts, dashboards, and health metrics that detect degradation before it produces operational failures.

Improve log content, telemetry, fault codes, and remote-debug capabilities so future investigations can be completed faster and with stronger evidence.

Establish failure taxonomies and standardized investigation methods for RF and connectivity issues.

Convert field learning into requirements for next-generation hardware, firmware, navigation, manufacturing, and service tooling.

Create technical investigation reports that clearly document evidence, hypotheses, root cause, containment, corrective action, and verification.

Mentor engineers and field teams in RF troubleshooting, data analysis, instrumentation, and structured root-cause methods.

At the Staff level, lead cross-platform investigations, identify common architectural weaknesses, and define company-wide RF field-performance strategy.

What You'll Bring

Proven experience resolving complex, intermittent field failures in autonomous systems, aerospace, robotics, automotive, telecommunications, industrial systems, or another high-reliability field.

Deep expertise in RF systems, wireless communications, antennas, propagation, interference, link budgets, and RF measurement.

Strong systems judgment across mechanical hardware, electronics, embedded firmware, networking, telemetry, and navigation.

Ability to determine when an apparent RF failure is actually caused by power, timing, software, configuration, mechanical integration, or environmental conditions.

Experience working with radios, antennas, RF cables, connectors, PCBAs, embedded systems, and mechanically integrated RF assemblies.

Hands-on proficiency with RF and electrical diagnostic equipment such as spectrum analyzers, VNAs, oscilloscopes, power meters, multimeters, and packet-analysis tools.

Experience analyzing large volumes of field logs and telemetry using Python, SQL, MATLAB, or equivalent tools.

Track record of developing automated diagnostics or monitoring that improved flee