Senior/Staff Technical Program Manager, Manufacturing Strategy & Operations
Zipline · San Francisco, United States · 1mo ago
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
Zipline’s Integration, Quality, Production, and Manufacturing Engineering organization turns complex hardware designs into safe, high-quality products that can be manufactured reliably at scale.
As the Senior/Staff Technical Program Manager for Manufacturing Strategy & Operations, you will serve as a strategic partner to the Director and leadership team. You will translate manufacturing goals into clear strategies, analytical decisions, operating plans, and cross-functional execution.
The organization is entering a period of significant growth in production capacity, factory footprint, organizational complexity, and team scope. You will help guide that growth by developing capacity and labor plans, leading strategic analyses, improving executive communication, and driving high-priority projects from concept through implementation.
This is not a traditional program coordination role. You will independently structure ambiguous problems, build rigorous analyses, develop recommendations, and help leaders make faster, better-informed decisions.
What You'll Do
Develop Manufacturing Strategy
- Build manufacturing growth plans that connect production demand, factory capacity, labor, equipment, facilities, quality, and organizational capabilities.
- Translate production ramps into recommendations for facility footprint, shifts, hiring, training, equipment, and investment.
- Develop scenario models that evaluate demand, productivity, yield, automation, outsourcing, cost, and schedule risk.
- Support annual planning, headcount planning, budgeting, capital planning, and organizational design.
Enable Leadership Decisions
- Turn complex operational questions into clear analyses, tradeoffs, and recommendations.
- Develop business cases for major investments, organizational changes, and strategic initiatives.
- Prepare executive presentations, decision documents, operating reviews, and strategic communications.
- Establish a consistent source of truth for performance, capacity, staffing, priorities, risks, and commitments.
Build the Operating System
- Design operating rhythms that connect long-range strategy to weekly and monthly execution.
- Establish metrics and dashboards across safety, quality, production, engineering, capacity, labor, cost, and schedule.
- Create clear mechanisms for escalating decisions, assigning owners, and driving actions through closure.
- Improve communication between functional teams, organizational leadership, and senior executives.
Lead Strategic Programs
- Own high-priority initiatives that span multiple teams or lack a clear functional owner.
- Lead programs such as factory labor-model changes, organizational transformations, and productivity efforts.
- Coordinate across Production, Manufacturing Engineering, Quality, Integration, Supply Chain, Finance, People, Recruiting, Facilities, and Design Engineering.
- Identify systemic blockers, drive cross-functional decisions, and ensure execution against agreed plans.
Increase Leadership Leverage
- Serve as a trusted thought partner to the Director and leadership team.
- Translate leadership discussions into clear strategies, decisions, communications, and action plans.
- Maintain continuity across meetings by tracking decisions, dependencies, and follow-through.
- Identify recurring coordination work and build more scalable systems and ownership models.
What You'll Bring
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience in technical program management, manufacturing strategy, business operations, industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, or a related field.
- Experience in a complex hardware, manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, robotics, medical-device, or similarly technical environment.
- Demonstrated ability to structure ambiguous problems and translate quantitative and qualitative analysis into clear recommendations.
- Experience developing capacity plans, labor models, operational strategies, organizational plans, or business cases.
- Strong understanding of manufacturing concepts such as capacity, takt time, throughput, yield, labor utilization, equipment constraints, and production readiness.
- Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives through implementation and measurable results.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including executive-level presentations and decision documents.
- Advanced proficiency with Excel or Google Sheets.
- Ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional partners without direct authority.
- Work in a factory environment - onsite role.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering, industrial/systems engineering, operations, business, economics, or a related field.
- Experience supporting a major production ramp, factory expansion, or rapidly scaling organization.
- Experience in a chief-of-staff, strategy and operations, or business operations role within a technical organization.
- Experience with headcount planning, organizational design, budgeting, capital planning, or financial modeling.
- Familiarity with Lean Manufacturing or other high-rate manufacturing systems.
Success in the First 30/90/180 Days
First 30 Days
- Develop a strong understanding of the organization, production system, priorities, and scaling risks.
- Build relationships with functional leaders and key cross-functional partners.
- Take ownership of core organizational communications and recurring operating reviews.
First 90 Days
- Establish a clear organizational scorecard and leadership operating cadence.
- Deliver an integrated manufacturing and labor scaling model.
- Lead one high-priority strategic project from problem definition through an approved execution plan.
First 180 Days
- Deliver a 12–24 month manufacturing and organizational strategy.
- Establish reliable planning and communication systems that improve decision-making.
- Execute a major initiative that measurably improves capacity, productivity, cost, quality, or organizational readiness.
What Else You Need To Know
The starting cash range for this role is $140,000 – $180,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; overtime pay; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.
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!
Voluntary Self-Identification
For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.
As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.