Operations Manager, Ground Systems

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.

Zipline is looking for an Operations Manager, Ground Systems to lead metro-level service operations across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

This role owns the local ‘operating system’ that keeps Zipline’s ground infrastructure available, safe, reliable, and ready for commercial operations. That includes field service execution, technician readiness, work-order discipline, safety standards, tooling, parts readiness, service workflows, escalation management, cross-functional coordination, and return-to-service execution for ground systems such as docks, chargers, zipping points, site infrastructure, and related support equipment.

This is a strategic and tactical metro leadership role. You will manage a crew leads and their teams of field technicians performing boots-on-the-ground service work across the Dallas Fort Worth metro area. You’ll coordinate with peer leaders in the metro, engineering and operations leaders in headquarters on strategic initiatives, ensure the success of new product launches and introductions, maintain logistics and supply chain parts availability, ensure team training and documentation is undertaken and understood, and hire, mentor and manage the team.

This role is for someone who can build and run a disciplined local operation: clear ownership, clear priorities, clear escalation paths, strong field standards, strong team morale, and a tight connection between what is happening in the field and what the broader organization needs to change.

• Own day-to-day and week-to-week service operations performance across the DFW metro. Run the DFW service operating rhythm: daily priorities, weekly site health reviews, backlog reviews, staffing reviews, safety reviews, escalation tracking, and performance follow-up.
• Ensure ground systems are safe, available, documented, and ready to support commercial operations. Create clear ownership for every down or degraded asset: one owner, one plan, one ETA, one escalation path, and clean return-to-service records. 
• Track and act on key metrics including asset availability, site uptime, work-order aging, backlog closure, repeat failure modes, technician productivity, return-to-service time, parts blockers, training completion, and safety actions. Use dashboards and analytics to identify bottlenecks, recurring issues, and areas where the broader system needs improvement.
• Manage local service priorities across planned maintenance, unplanned service work, degraded assets, launch support, site readiness, infrastructure issues, and escalations.
• Maintain a high standard for work-order quality, field documentation, handoffs, escalation notes, and return-to-service discipline.
• Set and enforce field safety expectations across service activities. Build a culture where safety is visible in daily work, not just reviewed after incidents.

• Manage, coach, and develop the DFW crew lead responsible for day-to-day technician execution. Build the leadership capability of the local team so the operation does not depend on one person knowing everything.
• Hire, onboard, retain, and grow field service talent as DFW scales.
• Build practical development paths for technicians and leads, including role expectations, skill progression, feedback, promotion readiness, and performance accountability.
• Maintain team motivation and operating discipline in a high-change environment where priorities can shift quickly.

• Represent Ground Systems Service Operations in regional planning, escalation, launch, uptime, staffing, and operational trade-off discussions.
• Translate field constraints into clear recommendations for leadership: what needs to change, why it matters, what trade-offs exist, and what decision is needed.

• Partner with Supply Chain, Logistics, Service Engineering, and field teams to improve parts availability, spares strategy, inventory accuracy, and material flow.
• Identify tooling gaps, process gaps, documentation gaps, and training gaps that slow technicians down or create avoidable downtime.
• Drive continuous improvement based on field data, technician feedback, service history, and recurring failure patterns.

• 4-7+ years of experience in operations, field service, maintenance, fleet operations, aviation, infrastructure, robotics, autonomy, utilities, EV charging, telecom, industrial systems, manufacturing operations, defense logistics, or another complex technical operations environment.
• Experience leading technical frontline teams, crew leads, supervisors, foremen, technicians, electricians, mechanics, field service teams, or distributed operations teams.
• Strong people leadership: hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance management, retention, promotion readiness, and team motivation.
• Strong stakeholder management skills. You can work directly with peer leaders and senior leaders, create alignment, and push back without creating unnecessary friction.
• Strong operating-system fundamentals: work orders, backlog management, shift handoffs, planned and unplanned maintenance, technician assignment, escalation paths, documentation, tooling control, parts readiness, and return-to-service workflows.
• Practical safety leadership in a technical or field environment. You know safety depends on standards, habits, inspection, training, escalation discipline, and leadership behavior.
• Ability to read operational data and convert it into action. You should be comfortable using metrics to identify bottlenecks, justify priorities, and drive improvement.
• Technical credibility with technicians, engineers, and operations leaders. You do not need to be the deepest technical expert in every system, but you need to understand enough to ask good questions, challenge weak assumptions, and separate signal from noise.
• Ability to create clarity under pressure when assets are down, parts are missing, teams disagree, work is aging, or operational priorities conflict.
• Low-ego, direct communication style with high ownership and high standards.
• Willingness to work in the field across the Dallas-Fort Worth area and support escalations outside standard business hours when operationally necessary.
• OSHA 30, PMP, Lean/Six Sigma, aviation maintenance, electrical, or other relevant technical certifications.
• Bilingual English/Spanish capability is a plus for field leadership in Texas, but not required.