Supplier Industrialization Engineer - Electronics

Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers.

 

The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

 

Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.

About You and The Role  

Does aggressively tackling ambitious 10x cross-disciplinary projects like owning the company’s transition from prototype to volume manufacturing excite you?  Do you cut short circular discussions and focus on the deliverables balancing meetings with the stakeholders and getting work done?  Do you find yourself wanting to be a part of the full cycle of supplier development from root cause analysis, cost optimization, production quality maintenance, and supplier selection & monitoring? In this role, you will closely collaborate with Zipline’s Engineering, Supply Chain, and Manufacturing teams to take Zipline’s Supplier Development to the next level, and you will push yourself and your teammates to chase innovation through continuous improvement, every day. This position is critical and will directly impact our ability to scale our life-saving service from tens to hundreds of millions of people.

This is an in-person/hybrid role, based out of our HQ in South San Francisco.

What You'll Do  

• Supplier Development: Audit current & potential vendors, both domestically and abroad to ensure they meet the quality, delivery and reliability requirements. Strengthen our current supplier ecosystem to meet Zipline’s increasing production volume & quality needs. Select, coach, and support potential and current suppliers into independent workforces that strive for continuous improvement towards zero defects. Partner with Zipline's Design,  Manufacturing and Supply Chain teams to determine requirements for outsourcing initiatives. Lead, track and improve supplier manufacturing process development and launch readiness for new products or design changes. 
• Quality Improvement: Partner with the Quality Team to strengthen the vendor/process certification methodology that ensures quality is built into our parts and processes. Push quality upstream by making sure that issues are permanently corrected at the source through root cause analysis. Drive improvements utilizing Lean methodologies, Statistical Process Control, and supplier scorecards. Ensure  supplier compliance, while driving systematic problem solving and process  improvement plans. Develop strong and positive relationships internally and externally to implement and track  supplier/engineering design changes, capacity studies and New Product  Introductions.
• Process Optimization: Partner with Engineering to collect DFM feedback from suppliers and act as a communication portal between the two parties  in order to 100% align on all requirements and improve the quality of our parts at the source while reducing the inspection needs. Lead and implement quality improvements at suppliers that results in cost savings on both ends.

What You'll Bring

• You have worked for at least 5 years in a fast paced and high growth environment as a Supplier Quality Engineer, Quality Engineer, Supplier Development Engineer, or Supplier Industrialization Engineer (experience in contract manufacturing of PCBs and/or PCBAs is a big plus!)
• You have worked or currently have certification as a Internal auditor(applicable standards are ISO9001/AS9100/ISO13485/IATF16949)
• You have worked with an established Quality System and applied it to improve your supply base (applicable standards are AS9100/ISO9001/IATF16949/ISO 13485)
• You have working experience with the following standards: IPC-A-600, IPC-A-610, J-STD-001, IPC-A-620, IPC-4104, IPC 6013 & IPC-SM-840)
• You have achieved measurable results with implementing Product Quality Planning with part suppliers and contract manufacturers, both domestic and overseas (applicable examples are APQP, PPAP, PFMEA, SPC)
• You have visited vendors in different geographies and you know what excellence looks like across a variety of manufacturing processes so that you can effectively assess the best fit for Zipline’s needs (examples are electromechanical assembly,  PCB & PCBA manufacturing, FPC & FPCA manufacturing, Harness and Cable Manufacturing, and Plating)
• You have actively participated in a product design effort and thus know what it takes to transition from prototype to volume production (if you used any Gerber viewer experience such as Valor, Viewmate, Vayo & Altium,  that is a big plus!) 
• Adept in Supplier Change Process evaluation and implementation, including working with sub-tier suppliers
• Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing is like a second language to you and you have used it to align intent and requirements between Design, Manufacturing and Quality on both ends
• You understand the value of methods like 8D, 5-WHY, Pareto Charts and Fishbone Diagrams because you have achieved measurable results by using them and influencing others to do the same
• Strong experience in problem solving methodologies (Lean/Six Sigma) and great attention to detail
• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to confidently address internal and external customers at all levels.
• You can thrive in structured and unstructured environments although you get excited to optimize limited resources with a heavy workload
• Ability to travel domestically and overseas roughly 50-60% of the time

What Else You Need to Know