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Software Engineering Manager, Launch & Scale Platform

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 are the Software Engineering Manager for Zipline's Launch & Scale Platform: the leader who builds the software systems that enable Zipline to rapidly deploy new infrastructure around the world. This team owns the operational platform that turns a new market from an idea into a live, revenue-generating network—covering site acquisition, infrastructure design, permitting, construction execution, deployment tracking, and launch readiness. Your work directly affects Zipline’s ability to expand into new countries and deliver time-critical supplies reliably at scale.

This is a greenfield product and engineering leadership role. You will establish the product roadmap, technical vision, and engineering foundations for a platform intended to scale Zipline from tens of sites to hundreds or thousands. You will partner closely with Real Estate, Launch Operations, Construction, Hardware, Flight Operations, Commercial, and Manufacturing to replace fragmented manual workflows with a single, auditable, automated operational system that raises launch velocity, predictability, and safety.

What You'll Do 

  • Own end-to-end strategy, delivery, and operational reliability for the Launch & Scale Platform (site acquisition pipeline, permitting, infrastructure design, construction execution, deployment tracking, and launch readiness).
  • Define and prioritize the product and technical roadmap with stakeholders, driving decisions by measurable business impact (launch velocity, mean time-to-launch, deployment predictability, and reduction in manual coordination).
  • Deliver owner-level outcomes: reduce manual coordination across launch workflows by a measurable percent, improve predictability of launch dates, shorten average site launch timelines, and increase launch execution visibility for cross-functional leaders.
  • Translate complex, cross-functional operational processes into durable systems: long-running workflows, vendor and government interfaces, asset tracking, document and permit lifecycle, and risk/exceptions handling.
  • Design and operate production services for business-critical launch systems: set SLOs, incident processes, and on-call expectations; ensure operational data is accurate, auditable, and actionable.
  • Build integrations across ERP, GIS, document management, permitting systems, construction/project-management tools, asset management, and internal operational systems to create a unified operational source of truth.
  • Be hands-on: ship code, lead architecture reviews, review critical PRs, and directly troubleshoot production incidents while mentoring engineers and growing the team.
  • Hire, coach, and scale the engineering organization for this platform; own hiring priorities, org shape, and technical standards as the capability grows.
  • Operate cross-functionally: work daily with Launch Operations, Construction, Hardware, Real Estate, Flight Ops, and Commercial to drive alignment, remove blockers, and validate outcomes against real-world operational constraints.

What You'll Bring

  • Level fit: Engineering Manager with demonstrated ownership of complex backend or full-stack operational platforms and experience leading small engineering teams while remaining technically hands-on.
  • Experience: 6+ years building software products with 2+ years managing engineers (or equivalent leadership experience). Proven ownership of projects that model real-world operational workflows or enterprise systems.
  • Must-have technical skills: systems design for distributed services, workflow orchestration, event-driven architectures, robust APIs, integrations with ERP/GIS/document systems, and scalable backend services.
  • Systems thinking: experience modeling long-running workflows, external dependencies (vendors, governments), physical assets, and complex state transitions with clear auditability.
  • Measurable-outcomes orientation: track record of defining and delivering metrics (e.g., reduced manual steps, shortened time-to-launch, improved predictability) and using them to prioritize roadmaps.
  • Operating intensity & safety awareness: comfortable owning software that directly impacts field operations and infrastructure deployment; understands failure modes and designs for visibility, mitigation, and recoverability.
  • Logistics: This role can be based in South San Francisco or remote within the U.S. Regular travel is expected to collaborate closely with stakeholders, understand operational challenges firsthand, and build software grounded in real-world workflows. Travel may include visits to our headquarters, operating sites, and new market launches. For remote team members, expect more frequent travel, typically a few days at a time, potentially a couple of times per month.
  • Behavioral must-haves: clear technical judgment under ambiguity, decisive prioritization, experience influencing senior stakeholders, and a bias toward durable platform solutions rather than one-off tools.

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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