Fleet Commander / RPIC

Zipline • South San Francisco, CA

10d • Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service, aiming to serve all humans equally by providing access to essential goods anytime, anywhere. They operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, making deliveries every 30 seconds across four continents and completing millions of deliveries. Their system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and saves people time. Zipline is looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth, motivated by building systems with a meaningful impact and scaling the future of logistics.

You will be a Fleet Commander (RPIC) on Zipline’s Flight Operations team, based onsite at their Fleet Command facility in South San Francisco, CA. This is an owner-level operations role where you will be the accountable RPIC for a large, highly autonomous BVLOS aircraft fleet delivering critical payloads. Your work directly impacts safety, regulatory compliance, mission throughput, and uptime for US operations as flight volume and geographic coverage scale.

Requirements

• FAA-issued Part 107 remote pilot certificate
• Completion of Zipline Fleet Commander (RPIC) training (training provided; includes ~2-week course near Charlotte)
• Valid driver’s license
• Proven operational experience: prior UAS or manned flight operations experience with direct RPIC or PIC responsibility and demonstrated decision authority during abnormal and emergency situations.
• Comfort owning KPIs and operating in an environment measured by flight volume, uptime, and incident metrics; accountable for maintaining safety-critical outcomes under time pressure.
• Ability to read telemetry and basic system diagnostics, perform structured troubleshooting, and communicate findings clearly to engineering and maintenance partners.
• Must be willing to work some nights and weekends and travel ~10% (training and occasional site launches).
• You will be expected to maintain qualification currency and pass required pre-employment screens.
• Decisive under pressure, meticulous in checklist-driven execution, and disciplined in logging and compliance.

Responsibilities

• Act as Responsible Person in Charge (RPIC) for all assigned sorties: own preflight planning, launch and recovery decisions, in-flight monitoring, and final mission disposition for multiple concurrent aircraft.
• Execute high-volume commercial flight operations to meet daily launch and delivery targets while maintaining required safety margins and regulatory permissions.
• Monitor weather, system health, telemetry, and airspace status continuously; make immediate go/no-go and diversion decisions and implement mitigations for anomalies.
• Triage and resolve fleet issues in real time (hardware faults, autonomy degradations, comms loss), coordinate fixes with maintenance and engineering, and record root-cause and corrective actions.
• Maintain operational compliance: follow and enforce documented policies, standard operating procedures, and FAA-authorized constraints; prepare for and support audits or regulatory inquiries.
• Own operational metrics for your shift: track and drive KPIs such as on-time delivery rate, mission success rate, and aircraft availability; escalate trends that threaten safety or throughput.
• Complete administrative tasks, training, and qualification maintenance on schedule; provide accurate shift logs and incident reports.
• Interface cross-functionally with maintenance/tech ops, engineering, safety & compliance, and site leadership to implement process or system changes that improve safety and throughput.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed