Test Maintenance Program Manager

Zipline•South San Francisco, CA

About The Position

About Zipline 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 largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. 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. About the Role As the Test Maintenance Program Manager, you will own the planning, tracking, and cross-functional execution of test maintenance workstreams across Zipline’s test operations footprint, including NestZ, Nest0, Truckzilla, Cascades, and future test sites. You’ll partner closely with the Test Maintenance Lead, Flight Test, Engineering, Product, and site operations teams to ensure maintenance needs are built into test campaigns early, blockers are tracked to closure, and test aircraft remain ready to support flight test priorities. This role is responsible for creating visibility across test maintenance programs, managing dependencies, tracking readiness, and ensuring lessons from test maintenance are converted into scalable process, tooling, documentation, and commercial readiness improvements. This role requires a highly organized operator who can manage ambiguity, drive follow-through across teams, and translate day-to-day test maintenance needs into structured programs with clear owners, milestones, risks, and outcomes.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in program management, operations management, maintenance operations, test operations, engineering operations, or a related technical field
Experience managing cross-functional workstreams across operations, engineering, product, and execution teams
Strong ability to manage multiple programs with clear ownership, follow-through, and stakeholder alignment
Experience with test operations, aircraft maintenance, fleet operations, robotics, aerospace, aviation, hardware development, or other complex technical environments
Strong organizational and communication skills, with the ability to create clarity in fast-moving and ambiguous environments
Ability to track risks, dependencies, blockers, and decisions across multiple teams and workstreams
High attention to detail, especially around configuration tracking, change control, documentation, readiness planning, and operational handoffs
Experience using tools such as Jira, Confluence, Slack, spreadsheets, dashboards, or equivalent project-management systems
Ability to connect tactical execution issues to program-level planning and long-term operating model improvements
Use maintenance data, dashboards, and operational metrics to identify trends, quantify blockers, and support prioritization across test maintenance workstreams.

Responsibilities

Own program management for test maintenance workstreams across NestZ, Nest0, Truckzilla, Cascades, and future test sites
Partner with the Test Maintenance Lead to translate floor-level execution needs into program plans, action tracking, and cross-functional closure
Manage test campaign maintenance readiness, including tooling, parts, documentation, technician training, configuration status, inspection needs, and return-to-service assumptions
Serve as the primary programmatic link between Maintenance Operations Engineering, Flight Test, Engineering, Product, and test site operations
Track milestones, blockers, owners, risks, and decisions for active test maintenance programs
Maintain visibility into test aircraft configuration, hardware modifications, inspection status, backlog, and maintenance readiness
Manage and update test maintenance change-control workflows, including hardware modification tracking and configuration audit follow-up
Create regular Test Maintenance Program Updates summarizing active workstreams, blockers, decisions needed, and impacts to test maintenance operations
Ensure test-site maintenance learnings are captured and translated into standard work, tooling requirements, documentation updates, training inputs, and commercial handoff criteria
Develop dashboards or metrics to track readiness, blocker closure, return-to-service performance, validation campaign progress, and improvement impact