Test Maintenance Engineering Lead

Build & Scale the Organization: Design the correct managerial hierarchy, hire, and build a world-class maintenance engineering organization composed of skilled technicians across multiple states and sites. Set crystal-clear expectations and drive accountability at every level.

Lead from the Front: Act as a hands-on technical leader. You must be highly capable and willing to jump in and perform any task that is asked of your technicians, leading by example with deep technical competence.

Drive Aviation-Grade Standards: Hold yourself and your entire team to the absolute highest standard, representative of rigorous aircraft maintenance. Instill a culture of safety, precision, and unwavering quality without sacrificing speed and agility.

Safeguard Commercial Success: Drive the team to proactively catch, escalate, and help resolve various technical and systematic challenges before they move downstream. Your success is directly determined by preventing process and quality gaps from making it to the commercial organization. Doing this will be dependent on you and every member of your team understanding deeply the operating reality of the product outside of the test environment.

Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work seamlessly across Engineering, Quality, Operations, and Commercial teams with the utmost professionalism, bridging the gap between testing phases and real-world commercial deployment. You will partner with, and hold accountable, these teams to ensure success is earned.

Lead with Humility: Foster a humble, ego-free team culture centered on continuous improvement, active listening, and dedicated support for your technicians on the ground.

Extensive Industry Experience: 10-15+ years of progressive technical experience in aviation maintenance, test engineering, hardware operations, or aerospace manufacturing.

Senior Leadership & Scale: 5-8+ years of direct people management experience. You have a proven track record of designing organizational structures and scaling distributed teams of technicians across multiple states and sites.

Hands-on Technical Prowess: You possess the technical depth to troubleshoot and execute maintenance tasks firsthand. An Airframe & Powerplant (A&P) license, equivalent military aviation experience, or an aerospace engineering degree combined with hands-on mechanical experience is highly preferred.

Process & Quality Obsession: Deep expertise in root cause analysis, defect containment, and process engineering. You have a history of building systems that definitively prevent downstream operational escapes.

Cross-Functional Professionalism: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to navigate complex organizational dynamics, build consensus, and interface professionally with both highly technical engineering teams and commercial leaders.

Humble Mindset: An ego-free approach to leadership. You are as comfortable turning a wrench on the shop floor as you are presenting strategic organizational plans to the executive team.

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!

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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.