Executive Assistant, Technical Executive Leadership

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

2h•$150,000 - $200,000•Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is looking for an exceptional Executive Assistant to support Jo Mardall, our Chief Hardware Officer, and CJ Moore, our Head of Autonomy. Together, Jo and CJ lead some of the most technically complex and operationally critical work at Zipline: aircraft reliability, hardware execution, flight software, autonomy, release readiness, fleet health, and the systems that allow Zipline to scale safely. This is not a traditional administrative support role. You will sit close to the technical operating heartbeat of the company, helping two senior leaders stay focused, prepared, and effective across a fast-moving mix of engineering reviews, fleet health forums, release decisions, incident follow-ups, recruiting, executive discussions, and cross-functional escalations. The right person for this role is highly organized, calm under pressure, technically curious, and comfortable operating in ambiguity. You do not need to be an engineer, but you do need to be able to follow technical conversations well enough to understand what matters, who owns what, what needs to happen next, and when something needs to be escalated. You will be trusted with sensitive company, technical, people, and operational information. You’ll need excellent judgment, strong written communication, crisp follow-through, and the confidence to work across senior executives, engineers, program managers, operations leaders, recruiting, People Partners, and field teams. This role is based at our South San Francisco, CA headquarters.

Requirements

7+ years of experience as an Executive Assistant, ideally supporting senior technical, engineering, product, operations, hardware, software, robotics, aerospace, manufacturing, or infrastructure leaders.
Exceptional judgment and discretion, especially when handling confidential technical, operational, recruiting, executive, or people-related information.
Strong ability to operate in technical environments. You do not need to make technical decisions, but you should be comfortable around topics like aircraft reliability, software releases, validation, hardware root cause analysis, fleet operations, and engineering escalations.
Excellent calendar, meeting, travel, and logistics management skills in a high-velocity environment with shifting priorities.
Outstanding written and verbal communication skills. You can turn messy discussion into clear follow-up, owners, dates, and next steps.
High ownership and follow-through. You notice dropped balls, close loops, and keep important work moving without needing constant direction.
Strong prioritization instincts and the ability to protect executive focus while staying responsive to urgent operational needs.
Comfort working across executives, senior engineers, program managers, recruiters, People Partners, operations leaders, and field teams.
Strong attention to detail and a high bar for preparation, accuracy, and reliability.
A service-oriented mindset with backbone. You are helpful, thoughtful, and proactive, while also comfortable pushing for clarity, protecting priorities, and escalating when needed.
Energy, resilience, and enthusiasm for supporting leaders whose work directly affects the safety, reliability, and scale of Zipline’s global operations.

Responsibilities

Partner directly with Jo and CJ to manage their calendars, priorities, commitments, and operating cadence across hardware, autonomy, flight software, fleet reliability, operations, and executive forums.
Own complex calendar management with strong business judgment, ensuring their time is spent on the highest-impact decisions, escalations, reviews, and team priorities.
Prepare leaders for technical operating meetings by gathering agendas, context, pre-reads, open decisions, owners, dates, and follow-up items across Slack, Gmail, Drive, Confluence, Jira, and internal systems.
Help coordinate critical forums such as fleet health reviews, release and validation discussions, hardware/software syncs, architecture reviews, escalation meetings, recruiting debriefs, and executive operating cadences.
Track follow-ups across technical workstreams, ensuring decisions, owners, deadlines, revisit dates, and open questions do not get lost after fast-moving meetings.
Support escalation hygiene by helping route the right topics to the right leaders, forums, and timelines while maintaining clear visibility on status and next steps.
Coordinate complex domestic and international travel, including itineraries, logistics, meeting preparation, and contingency planning.
Support recruiting and hiring workflows for senior and technical candidates, including interview scheduling, debrief coordination, candidate follow-up, and confidential process management.
Represent Jo, CJ, and the broader technical leadership team with professionalism, clarity, warmth, and high standards in interactions across Zipline and externally.
Proactively identify ways to improve how information flows, meetings are prepared, decisions are captured, and follow-through happens across both leaders’ organizations.