Senior Staff Site Acquisition and Business Development Program 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. 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

We’re looking for a Senior Staff Site Acquisition & Business Development Program Manager to build the operating systems, tools, processes, reporting, and external-facing materials that help Zipline scale site acquisition and business development across North America.

This is a senior operator role for someone who thrives at the intersection of real estate, analytics, execution, systems design, and storytelling. You understand how sites are sourced, qualified, negotiated, contracted, and handed off for deployment. You also understand that scaling site acquisition is not just bout closing more deals — it requires sharper processes, stronger cross-functional alignment, clearer partner messaging, better decision-making tools, and a more repeatable operating system.

This is not a traditional program management role. You will move fluidly between building pipeline and forecasting models, improving CRM workflows, creating executive dashboards, supporting regional operating reviews, identifying acquisition bottlenecks, building playbooks, and developing pitch materials that help landlords, brokers, municipalities, and strategic partners understand Zipline’s value proposition.

You will partner closely with Site Acquisition, Business Development, Legal, Design, Permitting, Construction, Finance, Operations, Marketing, and Communications. Your job is to create the systems, tools, and materials that help these teams move faster, make better decisions, and deliver signed sites that are not just contracted, but ready to deploy.

The ideal candidate combines deep real estate judgment with strong analytical ability, exceptional execution discipline, and excellent written communication. You can build a model in the morning, turn field feedback into a better landlord pitch deck in the afternoon, and drive cross-functional action items to closure by the end of the day.

We are looking for builders, not coordinators. This is a high-intensity role in a fast-paced environment. Candidates should expect periods of extended hours, weekend work, and availability outside of standard business hours to meet aggressive operational objectives and company goals. This role will be hybrid, with required in-office collaboration as needed, and may require up to 10% travel.

What You'll Do

• Own and improve the operating mechanisms that support Site Acquisition and Business Development across North America.
• Build and maintain planning, forecasting, pipeline, capacity, and performance models for the site acquisition organization.
• Develop dashboards and reporting that give leadership visibility into pipeline health, market progress, conversion, cycle time, blockers, forecasted closings, and deployment readiness.
• Create scalable tools, workflows, templates, and processes for sourcing, qualification, deal review, legal intake, stakeholder approvals, handoff readiness, and post-signature tracking.
• Partner with regional Site Acquisition Leads and Managers to identify where deals are getting stuck and build practical solutions that improve speed, consistency, and deal quality.
• Support recurring operating rhythms, including business reviews, pipeline reviews, executive updates, regional performance reviews, and cross-functional working sessions.
• Build and maintain playbooks for site acquisition, business development, broker engagement, landlord outreach, site qualification, objection handling, escalation paths, and handoff standards.
• Improve CRM discipline by refining stage definitions, required fields, reporting structure, pipeline hygiene, forecasting inputs, and data quality standards.
• Help define and maintain guardrails for deal terms, site requirements, landlord obligations, access rights, construction rights, utility needs, renewal rights, assignment rights, termination rights, and escalation requirements.
• Partner with Legal, Design, Permitting, Construction, Finance, and Operations to reduce rework, improve handoff quality, and ensure sites are structured for successful deployment.
• Develop external-facing enablement materials, including pitch decks, landlord one-pagers, broker materials, market launch decks, FAQs, objection-handling guides, case studies, and site host presentations.
• Partner with Marketing, Communications, Brand, and Business Development on website updates, partner-facing messaging, landing pages, inbound funnels, and other materials that support site acquisition and market expansion.
• Turn field feedback into clearer messaging, stronger collateral, better tools, and more effective acquisition strategies.
• Support market development efforts by identifying creative ways to generate inbound interest, improve broker engagement, increase landlord confidence, and strengthen Zipline’s presence in priority markets.
• Create feedback loops between Site Acquisition and downstream teams so lessons from Design, Permitting, Construction, Legal, and Operations improve future site selection, deal structure, and partner messaging.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives from ambiguity to execution, ensuring accountability against commitments, milestones, and business outcomes.

What You'll Bring

• 7+ years of experience in site acquisition, real estate, business development, infrastructure development, strategic operations, program management, telecom, EV charging, logistics, retail expansion, renewable energy, or another multi-site deployment environment.
• Deep understanding of real estate workflows, including sourcing, qualification, LOIs, leases, access agreements, diligence, legal review, landlord negotiations, and handoff to deployment teams.
• Strong analytical and modeling skills, with the ability to build planning models, forecasting tools, dashboards, and decision-support materials.
• Experience building scalable systems, processes, playbooks, templates, reporting structures, or operating mechanisms for high-growth teams.
• Strong commercial judgment and the ability to understand how deal terms impact design, permitting, construction, operations, cost, timing, and risk.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to create clear, persuasive materials for both internal and external audiences.
• Ability to translate complex real estate, technical, operational, and deployment concepts into simple messaging that landlords, brokers, municipalities, and strategic partners can understand.
• Experience creating or managing pitch decks, collateral, website content, presentations, FAQs, business cases, or sales enablement materials.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills and comfort working across Legal, Design, Permitting, Construction, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Communications, Business Development, and regional acquisition teams.
• High ownership, low ego, and a bias toward action in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.
• Strong attention to detail, especially around deal documentation, data integrity, external-facing materials, approval workflows, and handoff requirements.
• Ability to influence without direct authority and drive accountability across senior stakeholders.

What Success Looks Like

• Site Acquisition and Business Development teams have the tools, reporting, collateral, and operating systems needed to scale faster and more consistently.
• Leadership has clear visibility into pipeline health, market progress, acquisition bottlenecks, conversion rates, cycle times, and deployment readiness.
• Regional teams operate from shared playbooks, templates, CRM standards, reporting expectations, and deal review processes.
• Deals move more smoothly from sourcing to signature to handoff, with fewer delays caused by missing information, unclear ownership, weak collateral, or preventable rework.
• Legal, Design, Permitting, Construction, Finance, and Operations receive complete, high-quality deal packages that support faster deployment.
• Landlords, brokers, municipalities, and strategic partners have a clearer understanding of Zipline’s value proposition, site requirements, deployment model, and long-term benefits.
• Pitch decks, website content, one-pagers, and partner-facing materials improve confidence, reduce friction, and help increase deal conversion.
• Recurring issues are identified, addressed, and prevented through better tools, processes, training, messaging, and guardrails.
• The site acquisition function becomes more repeatable, measurable, persuasive, and scalable as Zipline grows.
• You are known as a builder who turns ambiguity into systems, bottlenecks into action plans, and complex real estate challenges into scalable operating mechanisms.

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting multi-region or national real estate acquisition programs.
• Experience with Salesforce or similar CRM systems, including pipeline architecture, reporting, dashboards, and data quality improvements.
• Experience working with legal teams on real estate contracting workflows, redline triage, approval processes, or template management.
• Familiarity with permitting, construction, design, utility coordination, zoning, access, title, easements, aviation, logistics, or other deployment-heavy functions.
• Experience building landlord collateral, broker programs, market launch materials, real estate pitch decks, partner-facing websites, or inbound acquisition funnels.
• Experience partnering with Marketing, Brand, Communications, or Product Marketing teams.
• Experience in a high-growth, hyperscale, infrastructure-heavy, or operationally intense environment.
• Strong spreadsheet, dashboarding, presentation, or business intelligence skills.
• Knowledge of commercial real estate, distributed infrastructure, logistics networks, retail expansion, telecom, EV charging, renewable energy, or industrial site development.

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!