Director of Aviation Maintenance Operations, East

Zipline•Atlanta, GA

About The Position

The Director of Aviation Maintenance Operations for the East Region owns end-to-end maintenance performance across Zipline’s regional operations. This senior execution role is responsible for regional fleet readiness, maintenance systems, staffing, and compliance across multiple distribution hubs and launch sites. The role builds, scales, and enforces a maintenance operating model across states, sites, and regulatory contexts, setting standards, holding leaders accountable, and intervening when reliability, safety, or capacity is at risk. Success is measured by sustained fleet uptime, audit-ready systems, and the ability to scale reliably. The position leads site-level maintenance leaders and owns regional maintenance programs, performance, and systems. It works with Flight Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, and Business Operations to address systemic issues and align capacity with demand. It also leads maintenance readiness for regional site launches and expansions. Frequent regional travel and hands-on presence at critical moments are required.

Requirements

10+ years leading maintenance or technical operations in aerospace, aviation, robotics, or other high-reliability hardware environments.
Proven experience owning outcomes across multiple sites or regions, rather than only a single operation.
Strong systems-thinking ability and capacity to balance standardization with local execution realities.
Demonstrated ability to build leaders and hold them accountable to measurable results.
Comfort operating in high-tempo, ambiguous environments where judgment matters more than process purity.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required.
Willingness to travel frequently across the region and be hands-on at critical moments.

Nice To Haves

Technical background in mechanical, electrical, or aerospace systems.

Responsibilities

Own regional maintenance outcomes, including financial performance, fleet asset allocations, system uptime and capacity, deferred maintenance risk, parts availability, and recovery from incidents or systemic issues.
Build, manage, and coach Heads of Maintenance or equivalent site-level leads; set expectations, review performance, promote ownership, drive accountability, and upgrade talent when needed.
Design and enforce regional preventive and corrective maintenance programs, tooling standards, documentation, training programs, scheduling, and escalation paths.
Use data, trend analysis, and field insight to anticipate failure modes, prioritize fixes, allocate resources, and prevent repeat issues across sites.
Create and execute fleet upgrade and retrofit plans while balancing uptime and resource utilization.
Maintain audit-ready compliance across states and regulatory environments, including traceability, record quality, and adherence to internal and external requirements.
Personally support audits, findings, or serious incidents as needed.
Partner with Flight Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, and Business Operations to resolve systemic issues, influence design and policy, and align capacity to demand.
Lead maintenance readiness for new site launches and regional expansions, including staffing models, tooling, spares strategy, and early-life reliability.