Senior CAE Engineer - Crash Safety and Powertrain Analysis

About You & the Role

Zipline builds autonomous delivery aircraft and ground systems that operate daily in demanding field environments. Safe products begin with rigorous analysis and validation. As a Senior CAE Engineer you will evaluate structural integrity, crashworthiness, battery safety, and failure modes of components and assemblies under extreme loading conditions.

You will work closely with the Powertrain and Battery teams to ensure that our powertrain components and energy storage systems remain safe throughout their lifecycle, including impact, crush, vibration, thermal, and post-crash events. You will drive a tight design-test-analysis loop that supports the development of robust mechanical test equipment that reproduces real world conditions safely, accurately, and repeatably. You will accelerate product development while generating the engineering evidence needed to make confident design decisions.

This role reports into the Structural Analysis Lead and is based at Zipline's manufacturing and test facility in South San Francisco.

How to know if it's you: You’ve built your own prototypes to get quick answers, pencil and paper calculations are always your first step, you prefer simple and fast over detailed and large, you are on the floor during system testing. On any given day you could be building test articles in our prototype labs, developing simple models to inform design trade studies, performing structural tests to validate analysis, working across disciplines to tackle complex system level challenges, or in the field supporting system tests.

Zipline was founded by engineers dedicated to making the world a better place. We are building a new global industry and are looking for a talented engineer who takes a hands-on approach and will use analysis to drive design. The ideal candidate will be someone who excels in a fast paced, dynamic environment and is excited to own and drive simple, elegant solutions to complex problems.

What You'll Do

• Own Zipline's crash safety analysis strategy for full-vehicle and component-level events; define load cases, failure modes, analysis methods, acceptance criteria, and reporting standards.
• Design and develop custom mechanical test equipment supporting impact, crush, penetration, drop, abuse, fire, vibration, and structural testing of batteries and aircraft hardware.
• Build and execute nonlinear explicit-dynamics models for aircraft and component crash, impact, drop, crush, penetration, and abuse events. Evaluate structural deformation, energy absorption, load paths, battery containment, electrical isolation, and other post-crash hazards.
• Translate analysis results into design changes that improve containment, isolation, damage tolerance, and safe post-crash behavior.
• Own durability analysis for powertrain components including busbars, motors, batteries, mounts, and supporting structures. Evaluate static and dynamic strength, modal response, random vibration, shock, harmonic loading, thermal-mechanical cycling, and fatigue life.
• Develop rapid first-principles studies and reduced-order models to guide design trades before committing to detailed simulation. Deliver clear engineering guidance quickly as aircraft and component configurations evolve.
• Build and maintain vehicle-level and detailed finite element models with appropriate fidelity for global load paths, local stresses, nonlinear contact, material behavior, joints, interfaces, and failure modes.
• Plan analysis correlation with the test team: define pre-test predictions, instrumentation needs, data-processing methods, and post-test correlation workflows.
• Support crash safety, abuse, and structural validation campaigns by rapidly developing new test capabilities and modifying existing equipment.
• Collaborate daily with design, powertrain, battery, systems, reliability, and test teams to drive part development and product-level decision making with respect to crash safety and structural performance.

What You'll Bring

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in CAE, structural analysis, crash safety, durability, or an equivalent discipline.
• Demonstrated ownership of full-vehicle or component crash analysis, preferably in automotive, aerospace, motorsports, or other safety-critical industries.
• Deep capability with nonlinear finite element analysis and explicit dynamics. Experience with LS-DYNA, Abaqus/Explicit, Radioss, PAM-CRASH, or equivalent tools.
• History of performing durability analysis involving fatigue, random vibration, shock, harmonic response, thermal-mechanical cycling, and bolted joints.
• Knowledge of powertrain hardware such as motors, busbars, and battery packs.
• Proficiency with Nastran, FEMAP, ANSA, HyperMesh, nCode, ANSYS, Simcenter 3D, or equivalent CAE software.
• Proficiency with NX, SolidWorks, or equivalent CAD software.
• Proficiency with Python, MATLAB, or equivalent scripting tools to automate model creation, post-processing, data reduction, and engineering reports.
• Strong engineering fundamentals in mechanics, energy absorption, nonlinear material behavior, plasticity, contact, joint modeling, fasteners, composites, metals, polymers, and failure modes.
• Proven track record of analysis correlation: defining pre-test predictions, selecting instrumentation, processing test data, evaluating model agreement, and updating models based on hardware results.
• Must-have traits: clear owner mentality with rapid decision cadence, tolerance for ambiguity, and disciplined documentation habits.
• 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 $130,000 - $180,000. 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, 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!