Hiring: Mechanical Engineer, RF Systems Company: Zipline Location: South San Francisco, CA Job Posted Time: 2026-09-10 10:33:45 Employment Type: Contract Target Skills & Keywords : Assembly, CAD About the job Required Skills: •As a Mechanical Design Engineer for RF Systems, you will own the physical architecture and mechanical design of antenna and RF assemblies used across Zipline’s avionics systems. Your scope may include GNSS, cellular, Wi-Fi, command-and-control, ADS-B, and other current or future wireless systems. •Own end-to-end mechanical design for antenna and RF assemblies, including architecture, packaging, CAD, drawings, specifications, tolerance analysis, BOMs, and production release. •Translate link-budget, antenna-pattern, polarization, isolation, desense, environmental, structural, and vehicle-level requirements into measurable mechanical constraints. •Establish antenna placement, orientation, keep-out, ground-plane, separation, and installation requirements across vehicle structures and avionics assemblies. •Design antenna mounts, radomes, housings, RF shields, feedline routing, connector interfaces, strain relief, grounding features, and serviceable module assemblies. •Define mechanical shielding, seam, gasket, grounding, and bonding strategies that contain digital and power-system emissions while avoiding unintended antenna effects. •Partner with RF and Test engineers on measurements including S-parameters, VSWR, insertion loss, antenna efficiency, gain, radiation pattern, polarization, isolation, desense, and environmental performance. •Create fixtures and representative structures that allow chamber and bench measurements to reproduce the installed mechanical configuration. Qualifications: •Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals, including structures, vibration, fatigue, thermal design, material selection, sealing, tolerance analysis, and environmental protection. •Advanced CAD, GD&T, datum-strategy, drawing-release, and production-tolerance skills. •Solid functional working knowledge of RF fundamentals, including antenna gain, radiation pattern, polarization, ground-plane effects, impedance, insertion loss, shielding, isolation, and link margin. •Demonstrated capacity to reason about how antenna placement, radome properties, conductive structures, cable routing, grounding, and assembly variation affect RF performance. •Track record of resolving difficult cross-disciplinary failures involving mechanical hardware, RF performance, electronics, manufacturing variation, or installation conditions. •This role is based in South San Francisco and requires regular hands-on work in the lab. Travel to suppliers, manufacturers, antenna ranges, chamber facilities, and flight-test locations will be required. •Periodic off-hours support may be required during flight tests, certification campaigns, production ramps, or urgent field investigations. Compensation: •$135,000 - $225,000 / year Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don't miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!