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 a highly analytical, highly curious Strategic Operations Intern to support planning, execution, and scaling efforts across our commercial operations organization.
You will work directly with senior operational leadership on some of the company's most important questions:
- How many people do we need to support growth?
- What limits our ability to launch new markets?
- How do we forecast demand, capacity, and operational performance?
- How do we turn fragmented information into actionable decisions?
This is not a traditional internship focused on research or presentations.
You will be embedded directly into operational planning and execution, helping build the systems, reporting, and operating mechanisms that allow teams to scale.
The ideal candidate enjoys solving messy problems, organizing complex information, and building tools that make teams more effective.
What You'll Do
- Support weekly operating reviews and executive reporting
- Build and maintain dashboards, trackers, and planning tools
- Analyze operational performance and identify trends
- Investigate root causes behind operational issues
- Gather and synthesize updates across multiple teams
- Improve data quality and process consistency
- Build forecasting and capacity-planning models
- Document and improve operational workflows
- Work directly with leaders across Operations, Finance, Recruiting, Launch, and Business Operations
- You must have completed the second year of you undergraduate studies in Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, Systems Engineering, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Data Science, Computer Science, or a related field. Masters and PhD are also eligible
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
- Comfortable working with spreadsheets and large datasets
- Excellent written and verbal communication
- Curious, proactive, and eager to learn
- Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously
- Excited by ambiguity and fast-moving environments
- SQL experience
- Python experience
- Experience building dashboards or automation tools
- Experience leading a club, organization, team, or side project
- Evidence that you've built systems to solve real-world problems
What Success Looks Like
By the end of the internship, you have become a trusted operator who can independently:
- Maintain key business reporting
- Identify and investigate operational issues
- Build useful analytical tools
- Drive follow-up and accountability across teams
- Create leverage for the organization by improving how information flows and decisions get made
This internship is a full-time position, in-person at our South San Francisco office. We will host our Fall 2026 interns from September to December. Zipline is unable to sponsor work visas for applicants to this position.
The hourly rate for this internship is $37 per hour. Additional benefits may include relocation support, a housing stipend, overtime pay, paid sick time, and other benefits, where applicable and subject to local requirements.
Candidates are limited to three (3) applications within a 30-day period.
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.
Zipline is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your point of contact at Zipline know if you require any accommodations throughout your interview process.
Skills Required
- Completed at least second year of undergraduate studies in Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, Systems Engineering, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Data Science, Computer Science, or related field (Masters and PhD also eligible)
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
- Comfortable working with spreadsheets and large datasets
- Excellent written and verbal communication
- Curious, proactive, and eager to learn
- Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously
- Excited by ambiguity and fast-moving environments
- Full-time, in-person internship at Zipline's South San Francisco office (Fall 2026, Sept–Dec)
- SQL experience
- Python experience
- Experience building dashboards or automation tools
- Experience leading a club, organization, team, or side project
- Evidence of building systems to solve real-world problems
What We Do
Zipline is the world's largest autonomous delivery network and is powered entirely by fixed-wing drones. Our fleet circles the equivalent distance of the equator every 2.5 days, and we have shipped hundreds of thousands of critical medical products across Rwanda, Ghana, and now beginning in the United States.
Why Work With Us
Zipline is the perfect intersection of super cutting-edge tech, deep social mission, and extremely compelling business case. Our small, scrappy, customer-obsessed, humble, and mission-driven team has set the bar for what is possible in the drone logistics industry globally, and has designed some incredibly elegant technology in the process.
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