Strategic Partnerships Manager, Retail

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

Zipline is building the future of delivery, and as a Strategic Partnerships Manager, Retail, you will ensure that our technology delivers incredible outcomes for our most important retail partners. In this role, you will own the relationship for a focused portfolio of Zipline’s most strategic retail partners. You will be directly responsible for launching, managing, and growing these partnerships as Zipline scales, serving as the face of Zipline to partner stakeholders across executive, commercial, product, operations, marketing, and field teams. You will develop a deep understanding of each partner’s business model, operating priorities, customer experience goals, and internal decision-making dynamics so that Zipline can help them transform delivery for their customers. This is not a high-volume account management role; success requires deep ownership of a focused set of strategic retail partners. This role requires strong executive communication, analytical rigor, and excellent stakeholder management. Retail partnerships are highly cross-functional and often involve many stakeholders with different goals, even within the same organization. You should be comfortable navigating ambiguity, building trust, creating clarity, and driving decisions in complex environments. You will turn partner priorities into expansion plans, operating rhythms, executive-ready materials, performance insights, and cross-functional workstreams that help Zipline and our partners grow together. Our ideal candidate is customer obsessed, highly analytical, politically astute, and action oriented. You should be able to move fluidly between data analysis, partner strategy, executive presentations, operational problem-solving, and white-glove partner service.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in partnerships, partner success, business development, customer success, strategy, operations, consulting, or a related function.
Experience owning and growing complex strategic partnerships, ideally with large retail, marketplace, logistics, consumer technology, or enterprise partners.
Proven ability to manage high-value, highly customized partnerships for a complex system, product, or service.
Strong executive presence, with experience building and delivering clear, compelling presentations for senior audiences.
Excellent analytical judgment; able to use data to diagnose performance, identify opportunities, prioritize work, and make recommendations.
Demonstrated success driving cross-functional alignment and accountability across senior internal and external stakeholders.
Ability to quickly build trust through authenticity, direct communication, responsiveness, and strong customer empathy.
Strong commercial judgment and the ability to balance partner needs with company priorities.
Highly organized and able to manage many workstreams, stakeholders, deadlines, and open questions at once.
Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-changing, and politically complex environments.
Strong written communication skills, especially for executive updates, strategic plans, business reviews, and decision documents.
Ownership mindset, bias toward action, and commitment to continuous improvement.
Intellectual curiosity and excitement about transforming the future of logistics.

Responsibilities

Own strategic retail partner relationships from launch through growth, expansion, and ongoing performance management.
Collaborate with retail partners to understand their business objectives, customer experience goals, operational constraints, and internal stakeholder priorities.
Build trusted relationships across partner organizations, including senior executives, commercial leaders, product teams, operations teams, marketing teams, and field stakeholders.
Develop expansion plans across markets, partner locations, delivery use cases, customer segments, and operating models.
Work cross-functionally with Zipline Operations, Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, Marketing, Support, and other teams to launch and expand service for retail partners.
Establish and track key success metrics, monitor partner performance, identify risks and opportunities, and drive continuous improvement.
Create executive-ready presentations, business reviews, briefing materials, launch updates, performance analyses, and recommendation memos.
Lead regular partner touchpoints, quarterly business reviews, executive briefings, launch readouts, and internal alignment meetings.
Provide white-glove service to strategic partners while maintaining clear expectations, priorities, and accountability on both sides.
Gather partner insights, analyze data, and surface relevant findings to identify growth opportunities and influence Zipline’s product roadmap.
Navigate complex stakeholder environments where different teams may have competing goals, timelines, or definitions of success.
Translate ambiguous partner needs into clear internal plans, owners, next steps, and decision points.
Advocate for partner needs while balancing Zipline’s operational, product, financial, and strategic priorities.