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IT Technical Program Manager

South San Francisco, California, USA

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 You and The Role

You will be Zipline’s IT Technical Program Manager (Individual Contributor, Senior IC level) responsible for owning IT program delivery that enables new site openings, facility upgrades, and workplace technology across Zipline’s operational footprint. Zipline operates autonomous logistics (robotics + aviation) with distributed launch sites and field operations; IT failures at site handoff directly affect launch cadence, safety monitoring, and customer deliveries. You will create the operating cadence, decision gates, and launch-readiness criteria that ensure network, security, AV, access control, endpoints, and support processes are deployable and operable at scale. This role reports to the Director of IT. The role is based in South San Francisco with a hybrid/on-site expectation: ~3 days/week onsite at the primary office. Work will include occasional off-hours coordination around site launches or incident mitigations.

What You'll Do

  • Own end-to-end IT program delivery for office/site openings, relocations, facility upgrades, and workplace tech launches from intake through operational handoff and 90-day stability. You are the single owner accountable for meeting launch-readiness criteria.
  • Create and operate the IT intake, prioritization, capacity-planning, and portfolio cadence used by IT leadership to commit to timelines and tradeoffs; deliver weekly program status that drives resourcing decisions.
  • Build and maintain project plans with clear owners, milestones, dependencies, SLAs, and risk mitigations; reduce unplanned rework through continuous improvement.
  • Coordinate cross-functionally with Facilities, Real Estate, Construction, Workplace, Security, Finance, People, Field Ops, and external vendors to align schedules, procurement lead times, and operational gates; own escalation to senior stakeholders when trades are required.
  • Drive vendor scopes, SLA definitions, and vendor performance remediation; own vendor acceptance criteria and measurable KPIs (e.g., installation completion date, first-call resolution rate, post-launch incident rate).
  • Ensure solutions are supportable, secure, documented, and instrumented for operational monitoring before handoff; establish runbooks, on-call handoffs, and a 30/60/90-day support stabilization plan for each launch.
  • Run launch readiness reviews, post-launch retrospectives, and maintain decision logs, risk registers, launch trackers, and lessons-learned playbooks so future launches scale predictably.
  • Measure and report program outcomes: percent of launches meeting readiness gates, mean time to remediate critical launch blockers, vendor SLA adherence, and reduction in post-launch incidents.

What You'll Bring

  • 5+ years managing technical programs focused on IT infrastructure, workplace technology, site deployments, or distributed operations.
  • Direct experience with enterprise networking, access control/physical security systems, AV/conferencing, endpoint provisioning (MDM), monitoring/alerting, or equivalent technical domains sufficient to partner with engineering and vendors on tradeoffs and design decisions.
  • Track record running go/no-go launch gates, readiness checklists, and operational handoffs with measurable outcomes (shareable examples such as reduced rework, improved SLA compliance, or improved launch cadence required in interviews).
  • Proven ability to coordinate cross-functional roadmaps with Facilities/Construction/Real Estate and to account for procurement lead times and construction milestones in IT schedules.
  • Demonstrated experience operating in environments with on-site field operations or safety/regulatory constraints (aviation, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics preferred). Knowledge of how IT readiness impacts operational safety or launch cadence is required.
  • Strong delivery bias: experience owning escalation decisions, vendor remediation, and delivering against hard deadlines; comfortable with occasional off-hours coordination for site launches or incident response.
  • Tools & methods: experience with project and service tools (e.g., Jira, ServiceNow, Smartsheet) and program artifacts (risk registers, decision logs, readiness checklists). PMP, PgMP, or equivalent delivery certification is a plus.

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!

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