Mechanical Design Engineer

Full-Time Jan 2018-Present • Intern May-Aug 2017

Mechanical Design Engineering & Human Factors

Zipline designs, builds, and operates the world’s largest drone delivery service, specializing in providing doctors with medical supplies on-demand.

As one of a small handful of mechanical engineers responsible for aircraft design, I’ve shaped the system architecture and key interfaces through the lens of human factors, and owned several subsystems from prototyping to initial internal production to reliability & testing to outsourcing with contract manufacturers. DFM, DFA, FEA, DFMEA, GD&T, DVP&R - if it’s a terrible acronym, I’m probably familiar.

I’ve worked alongside manufacturers in China to develop novel production techniques, build technicians in the US to improve assembly, and flight operators in Rwanda to understand their challenges and implement solutions.

I also spent over a year as the hiring manager for our mechanical engineering intern program, with a focus on increasing team diversity and improving interview process efficiency without eliminating the human element. I completely revamped our interview process to directly map qualities and values we seek in candidates to the interview questions and prompts we pose at each stage. This reduces overlap between interviewers and unconscious bias that can stem from vague criteria. By leveraging historical interview data and strategically adding an additional phone interview before the on-site stage, I actually reduced the team’s total interviewing time by decreasing the total number of on-sites. I’ve sourced, interviewed, and hired several interns between 2020 and 2021, with multiple full-time conversions.