Hiring Manager

Best Guess

Job Description

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

As a Service Engineer, you’ll help troubleshoot Zipline’s aircraft, droids, and docks when they are down. You’ll review logs, follow troubleshooting steps, write simple scripts or queries, document what you find, and work with operations, maintenance, and engineering teams to return assets to service quickly and safely.

What You'll Do

As a Service Engineer, you'll lead technical response as the primary technical lead for grounded assets, coordinating cross-team resources and driving resolution with urgency and precision. Your systematic troubleshooting approach will use approved procedures and diagnostic tools to identify root causes and implement solutions for aircraft, droid, and dock systems. Working in 24/7 shift operations forms a core part of your responsibilities, including comprehensive handovers, on-call duties, and emergency response protocols to maintain continuous coverage.
You'll coordinate cross-team escalation to engineering support and maintenance teams, creating work orders and ensuring smooth handoffs when physical maintenance is required. Log analysis and diagnostics will become second nature as you identify patterns, troubleshoot complex technical issues, and generate reports that drive continuous improvement. Maintaining regulatory compliance with FAA Part 135 operations and ensures all documentation meets aviation industry standards.
Driving continuous improvement will be central to your role as you contribute to troubleshooting guides, identify automation opportunities, and provide feedback to design engineering on system improvements. You'll operate advanced tools including the Zipline ERP (Zerp) platform, Fleet Apps, incident.io, and Jira to track assets, manage incidents, and coordinate with global teams. Asset triage and prioritization will maximize operational impact, ensuring critical assets return to service first while managing multiple incidents simultaneously.
Documentation and tracking of all troubleshooting activities, resolutions, and lessons learned builds institutional knowledge and supports regulatory requirements.

What You'll Bring

3+ years of hands-on technical experience, internship, apprenticeship, or relevant technical education in a field such as mechanical, electrical, mechatronics, aerospace, systems engineering, maintenance, field operations, telecom, automotive, or similar.
Strong curiosity and a structured approach to troubleshooting technical problems.
Clear written and verbal communication, including documenting work and sharing updates with others.
Comfort working in a fast-paced operations environment where reliability matters.
Ability to follow procedures, learn new tools, and escalate issues appropriately.
Ownership, adaptability, and a continuous improvement mindset.
Eligibility to work in Rwanda.

Nice to Have Competencies

Experience with complex technical systems such as aircraft, robotics, vehicles, telecom, solar, or industrial equipment.
Exposure to logs, data analysis, SQL, scripting, dashboards, or technical reporting.
Experience improving documentation, processes, or troubleshooting guides.
Experience in maintenance, field operations, or shift-based environments.

What Else You Need to Know

This role requires working 24/7 shift operations including nights, weekends, and holidays as part of our continuous coverage model. You'll participate in on-call rotations and must be available for rapid response when critical assets are grounded.

The position operates under strict performance metrics and regulatory requirements. You'll work in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment where your decisions directly impact customer deliveries and operational safety.

Ability to sit (or stand at a standing desk) for long periods of time to review tickets, conduct analysis and coordinate solutions with engineers when needed.

Travel may be required occasionally for training, certification, or site support activities (10%).

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

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!