Head of Product Operations

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

As Head of Product Operations, you will build and lead Zipline's Product Operations function. Your mission is to make the product organization dramatically more effective by improving how products are planned, built, launched, measured, and operated. You'll work across Product Management, Engineering, Design, Operations, Data Science, Commercial, Customer Success, and Executive Leadership to establish the operating system for product development at Zipline. This is not a traditional program management role. You will define operating rhythms, improve product quality, create organizational leverage through better tooling and processes, and ensure every product launch is measurable, operationally ready, and delivers meaningful customer outcomes. As Zipline scales autonomous delivery around the world, Product Operations will become the connective tissue between product strategy and operational execution. In your first year, you will establish a consistent operating cadence for product planning and reviews, standardize launch readiness and post-launch review processes, improve cross-functional execution, reduce time-to-launch while increasing launch quality, act as the conduit between headquarters and the field, and become a trusted leader for operational excellence within Product. This role is based in South San Francisco, with regular onsite collaboration and occasional travel to launch sites to observe operations, gat

Requirements

10+ years of experience in Product Operations, Product Management, Program Management, Strategy & Operations, or related leadership roles.
Experience building Product Operations functions at a high-growth technology company.
Strong understanding of modern product development practices, product organizations, and software delivery.
Proven ability to improve organizational effectiveness through better systems, tooling, and operational rigor.
Excellent analytical skills with experience defining KPIs, building dashboards, and measuring organizational performance.
Exceptional cross-functional leadership and influence without direct authority.
Strong program management skills with experience coordinating large, complex product launches.
Excellent written communication with experience producing executive-ready decision documents, operating reviews, and strategic planning materials.
Comfortable working with engineers, designers, data scientists, and operational leaders.
Demonstrated ability to simplify complex organizational problems into scalable processes.

Nice To Haves

Experience with SQL, analytics platforms, experimentation frameworks, or operational metrics is a plus.
Experience supporting products with significant operational, logistics, marketplace, or hardware components is preferred.

Responsibilities

Build and continuously improve the operating model for Product Management across planning, roadmaps, reviews, launches, and post-launch measurement.
Standardize product development processes without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
Design operating cadences including roadmap reviews, quarterly planning, launch readiness reviews, and executive product reviews.
Define launch readiness standards across engineering, operations, legal, safety, customer support, and commercial teams.
Ensure every launch includes clear success metrics, operational playbooks, monitoring, rollback plans, and ownership.
Drive post-launch reviews and ensure learnings are incorporated into future development.
Build dashboards that measure product health, launch quality, adoption, reliability, and customer outcomes.
Partner with Data Science to define product KPIs and improve measurement across the organization.
Identify systemic bottlenecks slowing product delivery and implement scalable solutions.
Develop templates, documentation, decision frameworks, and tooling that allow Product Managers to spend more time solving customer problems.
Improve the quality of PRDs, decision documents, experimentation plans, and roadmap communication.
Own the Product team's internal knowledge management systems.
Partner closely with Engineering, Design, Operations, Commercial, Customer Success, Marketplace Operations, and Safety to improve cross-functional alignment.
Create clear ownership boundaries, decision-making frameworks, and escalation paths.
Reduce organizational friction between product teams and operational stakeholders.
Lead cross-functional launch planning for major initiatives.
Coordinate readiness across customer communications, training, support documentation, field operations, monitoring, analytics, and incident response.
Ensure launches transition smoothly from development into day-to-day operations.
Establish scalable systems for collecting insights from field operations, customer support, commercial teams, and customers.
Ensure product teams have continuous visibility into operational pain points and customer feedback.
Translate recurring issues into actionable product opportunities.
Help define planning frameworks, portfolio management, resource allocation, and organizational priorities.
Introduce best practices from high-performing technology organizations while adapting them to Zipline's unique operational environment.
Build and lead a high-performing Product Operations team over time.