Production Materials Manager
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.
About You And The Role
The Production Materials Manager leads Zipline's Production Materials organization, owning the strategy, people, processes, and systems that ensure the right material is available in the right quantity, at the right place, and at the right time to support manufacturing. The organization is responsible for every movement of production material after it arrives onsite—from receiving and warehouse operations to inventory control, inspection staging, line-side replenishment, internal logistics, and finished goods movement. This role leads multiple frontline leaders responsible for warehouse operations and line-side logistics while partnering closely with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Planning, Quality, Engineering, and Facilities. As Zipline scales production from today's rates to hundreds of aircraft per week, you'll design and continuously evolve the operating model, warehouse strategy, and material flow systems that enable high-rate manufacturing. Success in this role requires balancing long-term strategic thinking with operational execution. You'll build the organizational structure, processes, and tools needed to support exponential growth while ensuring world-class performance in production uptime, inventory accuracy, warehouse health, replenishment performance, operational efficiency, safety, and team development.
What You'll Do
Lead the Organization
Lead, coach, and develop the Production Materials leadership team, including Warehouse Leads, Material Replenishment Leads, and future operational leaders.
Build a high-performing organization through hiring, performance management, succession planning, and employee development.
Establish clear ownership, accountability, and operating rhythms across all Production Materials functions.
Foster a culture centered on safety, operational excellence, continuous improvement, and customer service.
Build The System
Architect and implement scalable warehouse, replenishment, inventory management, and internal logistics systems capable of supporting 10×–100× production growth.
Develop and execute the roadmap for warehouse expansion, offsite storage, milk runs, supermarket design, line-side inventory strategies, and material movement systems.
Design, standardize, and continuously improve material flow processes, inventory transactions, replenishment methods, warehouse operations, and material disposition workflows across the Production Materials organization.
Build the operational management system by establishing KPIs, dashboards, operating rhythms, labor planning, capacity planning, and standard operating procedures that enable operational excellence.
Partner with internal software teams to define the product vision, operational requirements, and roadmap for in-house tools that improve inventory visibility, material flow, warehouse operations, and production replenishment.
Evaluate and implement new technologies, automation, and industry best practices to improve safety, efficiency, scalability, and operational performance.
Operate the System
Oversee receiving, warehouse operations, inventory control, IQC staging, line-side replenishment, internal logistics, and finished goods movement.
Ensure uninterrupted production by maintaining high material availability while minimizing inventory waste and operational inefficiencies.
Partner closely with Supply Chain, Planning, Manufacturing, Quality, Engineering, and Facilities to continuously improve production readiness, material flow, and operational capabilities.
Define the product vision and operational requirements for in-house software tools that support warehouse operations, inventory management, material movement, and production replenishment, partnering closely with software engineering teams to guide development and implementation.
Own warehouse organization standards, inventory governance, replenishment performance, and operational KPIs.
Develop and standardize material movement processes, inventory transactions, material disposition workflows, and operating procedures across the Production Materials organization.
Drive continuous improvement through data, KPI dashboards, labor planning, capacity planning, and digital tools that improve inventory visibility, traceability, and operational decision-making.