Senior Manager / Director - Ground Systems Service Operations

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date. Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations. Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe. We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds. This role is for someone who has built operational teams before, is energized by turning ambiguity into a real operating system, and knows how to hire great leaders and great field teams underneath them. The scope is broad. You will define how Zipline services and supports ground infrastructure across many sites and metros, including zipping points, docks, chargers, site infrastructure, tooling, spares, service workflows, safety systems, technician training, onboarding, escalation paths, resourcing plans, role definitions, and return-to-service discipline. This is not only a maintenance execution role - it is an organization-building role for a leader who can operate strategically, administratively, and tactically at the same time. You will build the structure that lets a distributed service organization scale: the leadership bench, hiring plan, training model, safety cadence, field processes, management routines, operating metrics, staffing assumptions, documentation standards, and clear division of responsibility between Service Operations, Engineering, Service Engineering, Launch, Flight Operations, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Product, Finance, and Field Operations. This role should appeal to someone who enjoys building the first durable version of an operations organization: setting the standard, testing it in the field, refining it quickly, and creating enough process to scale without creating bureaucracy. You should be comfortable moving between a site escalation, a staffing model, a safety review, a technician onboarding plan, a leader-hiring discussion, and a strategic decision about where responsibility should sit between teams.

Requirements

Demonstrated experience building and scaling an operations, service operations, field service, maintenance, fleet, infrastructure, aviation, robotics, autonomy, manufacturing operations, or similarly complex technical field organization.
A track record of hiring great leaders and building strong teams underneath them. You know how to identify leadership potential, set expectations, coach managers, and raise the bar without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Strong organization-building instincts: operating models, role definitions, RACI-style ownership, staffing plans, training systems, onboarding, safety cadence, management routines, and process design.
Experience leading teams that support physical hardware in the field across many sites, metros, regions, or customer locations. Experience with technicians, electricians, field service teams, maintenance teams, or distributed site operations is especially relevant.
Comfort moving between strategy and execution. You can design a multi-metro resourcing model, then help a site leader unblock a staffing gap, work-order backlog, training issue, safety concern, or cross-functional handoff problem.
Strong operating-system fundamentals across work orders, shift handoffs, tooling control, spares planning, planned and unplanned maintenance, technician assignment, escalation paths, field documentation, and return-to-service processes.
Practical safety leadership. You know that safety is not a slide deck; it is training, habits, field inspection, clear standards, escalation discipline, corrective action, and leadership behavior.
Fluency with operational metrics such as asset availability, site uptime, downtime, SLA breach rate, work-order aging, repeat failure modes, technician productivity, training completion, scheduled-service compliance, parts blockers, staffing coverage, and cost per delivery.
Technical credibility with engineers and technicians, combined with the judgment to know that the work is not complete until the asset is back in operation with clean records and a verified fix.
Demonstrated ability to create clarity under pressure when assets are down, sites are short on capacity, work orders are stale, parts are missing, safety issues emerge, or multiple teams are pointing at each other.
High standards for culture: direct communication, low ego, high ownership, safety mindset, urgency, practical problem solving, and willingness to lead from the front.
Willingness to travel regularly to Zipline sites and spend active time with service teams in the field.

Responsibilities

Build and scale Ground Systems Service Operations as a distributed field organization across active US metros and future expansion sites.
Hire, develop, and retain the leaders and frontline teams needed to support a growing network of field technicians, electricians, service specialists, site leads, and regional operators.
Define the operating model for service across sites and metros, including what work sits with Service Operations, what sits with Engineering or Service Engineering, what Launch owns, what Field Operations owns, and how handoffs work when issues cross team boundaries.
Create the management system for the organization: daily and weekly operating cadence, escalation reviews, site health reviews, safety reviews, leader routines, performance management, and clear inspection mechanisms.
Build the training and onboarding system for technicians and site service leaders, including role expectations, practical qualification paths, safety expectations, standard work, field playbooks, and recurring retraining as systems evolve.
Own service resourcing plans across current and future metros, including staffing models, shift coverage, mobile service coverage, launch support, escalation coverage, and the assumptions that connect labor capacity to site uptime and delivery volume.
Establish the safety operating system for Ground Systems Service Operations, including field safety expectations, work authorization, hazard identification, incident response, corrective actions, and mechanisms that keep safety visible in daily work.
Define and refine process without slowing the team down: SOPs, maintenance and service playbooks, work-order discipline, handoff packets, escalation rules, tooling catalogs, spares processes, documentation standards, and dashboards teams actually use.
Create clear ownership for every down or degraded asset: one owner, one plan, one ETA, one escalation path, and clean return-to-service records.
Partner tightly with Engineering, Service Engineering, Launch, Flight Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Product, Finance, and Field Operations so service is never an ambiguous handoff point.
Improve service economics by reducing avoidable downtime, increasing asset availability, improving work-order throughput, making planned service predictable, improving parts readiness, and connecting service performance to cost per delivery and site availability.
Prepare Zipline for the next phase of scale, including new metro launches, higher utilization, new charging and docking infrastructure, and future ground-system platforms.
Spend meaningful time in the field with service teams, especially when a site, process, launch, training path, safety mechanism, or escalation is not yet working.