Launch Manager

About Zipline

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, making 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.

About You And The Role

Zipline is building the charging-point and partner network that brings new delivery capacity online. As a Launch Manager, you will own deployments in assigned markets from approval through first delivery and transition to stable operations. This is hands-on launch ownership, not coordination. You will run the integrated launch plan, drive readiness decisions and escalations across teams, and work in the field to make launches safe and repeatable. Success means completing readiness gates, enabling first delivery, and handing field teams an operation they can run and scale.

What You'll Do

• Own integrated launch plans and critical paths for charging locations and partner sites from approval through first delivery.
• Build the systems, tools, operating rhythms, and readiness mechanisms that make launches safe, fast, repeatable, and scalable.
• Lead site-level readiness; identify blockers, clarify owners, drive decisions, and escalate, schedule, regulatory, or partner tradeoffs that require functional alignment.
• Capture infrastructure, permitting, flight operations, maintenance, regulatory, commercial, community engagement, and partner workstreams against launch milestones.
• Establish readiness gates, playbooks, dashboards, and operating rhythms that make deployments repeatable across metros, partners, and future verticals.
• Track schedule, regulatory status, partner readiness, blockers, and operational handoff health; provide clear visibility to stakeholders.
• Lead retrospectives using field results and operational data to remove systemic bottlenecks and improve future launches.
• Drive transition to stable operations, ensuring each site is practical for field teams, measurable, and prepared to scale.

What You'll Bring

• 6+ years of experience in operations, deployment, infrastructure rollout, logistics, marketplace expansion, or physical-network scaling.
• A record of owning complex, cross-functional launches or rollouts through go-live in real operating environments.
• Experience building integrated plans across multiple teams and resolving dependencies affecting schedule, readiness, and execution.
• Sound field judgment to distinguish documented readiness from conditions that support a safe, successful launch.
• Ability to move between executive-level tradeoffs and site-level details, readiness checklists, and partner coordination.
• Comfort working through ambiguity, time pressure, and changing field conditions while maintaining structure and follow-through.
• Frequent travel to cities throughout the U.S. to directly support charging-location and partner-site launches; experience with physical infrastructure, logistics networks, aviation, robotics, autonomous systems, permitting, or construction is valued.

What Else You Need To Know

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities. We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!