Engineering / Product Finance
Zipline
About Zipline
About You and The Role
You are a finance professional who thrives in technical, cross-functional environments. You’ve partnered with engineering and program teams to drive cost-down initiatives, manage complex budgets, and align financial planning with hardware development and manufacturing priorities.
You’ve worked closely with supply chain, manufacturing, or R&D teams to translate product ambitions into operating plans, unit cost models, and capital strategies. You love getting into the details of BOMs, production plans, and absorption rates—but also step back to see the bigger picture of cost efficiency and financial sustainability.
In this role, you will partner with Zipline’s engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain leads to shape the cost structure of our delivery systems—supporting both new product introductions and scaled production efforts. From marginal cost modeling to tooling investments, you’ll play a critical role in ensuring Zipline’s operations scale profitably.
You will own the financial planning and analysis that powers our production economics. The ideal candidate is energized by solving complex, systems-level problems and brings a strong foundation in manufacturing, operations, or hardware cost planning.
What You'll Do
- Partner with Engineering, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain teams to model product and production costs across development stages.
- Drive marginal cost analysis and margin forecasts for new and existing products
Translate engineering and production plans into financially rigorous build and ramp scenarios, identifying risks and reallocation opportunities - Support cross-functional tradeoff decisions—such as make vs. buy, tooling investments, and Design for Manufacturing options—with clear financial impact analysis
- Drive cost-down roadmaps in collaboration with Design, Supply Chain, and Manufacturing, identifying levers to improve unit economics
- Own the forecast and budget cycles for manufacturing and engineering spend areas, ensuring transparency and accountability across teams
- Build financial dashboards and tooling to improve visibility into BOM drivers, absorption trends, and program-level cost performance
What You'll Bring
- You have 4+ years of experience in hardware/manufacturing finance or engineering/product finance
- Proven ability to build partnerships across engineering, manufacturing, and operations teams
- Experience supporting product cost-down efforts and new product introduction (NPI) programs
- Strong modeling skills in Excel/Sheets; experience with ERP systems (e.g., NetSuite, SAP) and BI tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker)
- Experience partnering with R&D or product/engineering teams in a cross-functional environment
- Excellent communication and organizational skills; ability to synthesize complex data into actionable insights
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Engineering,or a related field; MBA is a plus
What Else You Need to Know
This role is located out of our South San Francisco, HQ.
The starting cash range for this role is $150,000-180,000. 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.