Logistics, Robotics, Healthcare, Aerospace, Technology

Failure Analysis Engineer - Materials

South San Francisco, CAOnsiteFull Time$125,000–$240,000 /yrPosted 2 months agoVisa sponsorship available

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Required skills

Failure Analysis
Materials Science
Materials Engineering
SEM/EDS
CT
FTIR
metallography
cross-sectioning
mechanical testing
optical microscopy

Nice to have

supplier controls
qualification testing
manufacturing processes
future product architecture
fleet health
product reliability

Role summary

Zipline is seeking a Failure Analysis Engineer - Materials to lead investigations into hardware failures, determining the root cause and influencing product reliability, design, and manufacturing processes. This role involves hands-on lab work, including microscopy, SEM/EDS, CT scanning, and mechanical testing, to preserve and interpret physical evidence. You will develop standardized failure analysis workflows and knowledge bases, partnering with cross-functional teams to ensure findings drive corrective actions and improve future product architecture. The ideal candidate has 3+ years of experience in Failure Analysis or Materials Science, with a strong understanding of material failure mechanisms and analytical techniques. This position is based in South San Francisco.

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

At Zipline, you will own the triage, execution, and success of Failure Analysis. You will determine what failed, how it failed, why it failed, and what physical evidence supports that conclusion. Your work will directly influence product reliability, fleet health, design decisions, supplier controls, qualification testing, manufacturing processes, and future product architecture. You will work between Failure Analysis and Material Science to investigate consequential hardware failures, preserve and interpret physical evidence, recognize recurring mechanisms across programs, and ensure that lessons learned from failures do not remain isolated within individual teams.

This role works across engineering and operations. You will own the physical investigation and technical conclusion while partnering with responsible engineering teams on root cause, containment, corrective actions, validation, and issue closure. This role is based at Zipline’s manufacturing and test lab facility in South San Francisco.

How to know if it's you: You are methodical about preserving evidence and skeptical of conclusions that are not supported by data. You know the right tool for the job. You enjoy moving between the lab floor and an engineering review, and you can explain a complicated failure mechanism in a way that everyone understands. On any given day you could be examining a fracture surface under a SEM, cross-sectioning a component to find a crack origin, reviewing CT data before teardown, identifying contaminants, coordinating an external laboratory investigation, or working with engineers across the company to determine whether a proposed corrective action effectively addresses the identified failure mechanism.

What You'll Do

Lead evidence-based investigations of consequential test, manufacturing, supplier, and field failures; determine the physical failure mechanism, and establish confidence in the conclusion.

Own Failure Analysis cases from intake through technical conclusion, including hardware handling, inspection strategy, test sequencing, laboratory execution, external lab coordination as needed, technical documentation, and communication of results.

Preserve and develop physical evidence through appropriate inspection and analytical workflows including optical microscopy, SEM/EDS, CT, FTIR, cross-sectioning, metallography, mechanical testing, and related techniques while maintaining traceability through the entire process.

Identify mechanisms such as fatigue, overload, corrosion, stress-corrosion cracking, embrittlement, wear, delamination, porosity, contamination, processing defects, coating failures, and other material or manufacturing-driven failure modes.

Build standardized Failure Analysis workflows, report formats, evidence-handling practices, confidence assessments, and failure-mechanism nomenclature so investigations are consistent and reusable across the company.

Build and maintain a centralized, searchable body of Failure Analysis knowledge that allows repeat and cross-program failure mechanisms to be tracked and connected

Partner with design, manufacturing, reliability, supplier quality, test, systems, and operations teams to ensure Failure Analysis findings influence design standards, supplier requirements, qualification testing, inspection criteria, maintenance strategy, and fleet decisions.

Review proposed corrective actions and provide technical expertise and evidence to ensure they address the identified physical failure mechanism.

Drive measurable outcomes including the quality and coverage of investigations, prevention of repeat failure mechanisms, recognition of recurring patterns across programs, and the number of engineering decisions improved or de-risked by Failure Analysis evidence.

What You'll Bring

3+ years of hands-on experience in Failure Analysis, Materials Science, Materials Engineering, or a related hardware engineering discipline.

Demonstrated experience independently investigating hardware failures and developing defensible conclusions from physical evidence.

Hands-on experience with multiple Failure Analysis and materials characterization techniques such as optical microscopy, SEM/EDS, metallography and cross-sectioning, CT/X-ray inspection, FTIR, hardness testing, mechanical testing, DSC,TGA, or similar analytical methods.

Strong understanding of material failure mechanisms including fracture, fatigue, corrosion, wear, material degradation, manufacturing defects, and environmentally assisted failure.

Deep expertise in Failure Analysis of at least one major class of engineering materials or hardware (metals, polymers, adhesives, coatings, solder systems, composites, or electronic/mechanical assemblies), with demonstrated ability to apply first-principles analytical reasoning across unfamiliar materials and failure mechanisms.

Ability to design an investigation from first principles

Experience developing laboratory methods, technical documentation, databases, or institutional Failure Analysis processes.

Experience working with external analytical laboratories and suppliers

Must-have traits: deep curiosity, clear owner mentality, disciplined evidence handling and documentation, strong technical judgment, comfort operating with incomplete information, and a bias toward finding the simplest investigation that can decisively answer the engineering question.

Location: role is based in South San Francisco.

Must be eligible to work in the US.

What Else You Need To Know

The starting cash range for this role is $125,000 - $240,000. 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.

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!

Voluntary Self-Identification

For 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.

As 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.

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