Operations Excellence Manager

About Zipline

Zipline is the worlds 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 worlds 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 worlds 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 weve 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 peoples 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

The Operations Excellence Manager plays a critical role in enhancing the efficiency quality and safety of Ziplines this role you will build and scale the quality safety and operational governance systems that enable country teams to run high-performing compliant operations with strong local ownership. Youll evolve the tools standards documentation and training that drive consistent performance across operational sites strengthen audit and incident management processes and lead continuous improvement initiatives across the network. This role requires strong systems thinking and a scalability mindset. Reporting to the Country Head of Product youll work closely with Nest Leads Compliance Officers Zipline Academy and Engineering and Regulatory teams to raise operational standards while empowering country teams to execute locally.

What Youll Do

Quality & Safety Governance Systems

• Design maintain and evolve Ziplines global quality safety and compliance systems including playbooks manuals and tools to ensure consistent compliant and high-performing operations.
• Partner with internal stakeholders to establish and maintain governance structures documentation standards and oversight tools that enable nests to own execution.
• Define and track country-level quality and safety objectives KPIs and performance metrics in collaboration with leadership driving accountability and data-driven improvement.
• Develop and oversee audit frameworks and tools that enable nests to self-assess compliance while leading or supporting regulatory safety and customer audits incident investigations and root cause analyses.
• Collaborate closely with nest compliance teams to ensure consistent execution of global and regional standards.

Continuous Improvement Scalability & Documentation

• Partner with Country Heads of Product and Nest Leads to refine SOPs technical documentation and workflows for greater efficiency and scalability.
• Work with the Excellence & Insights team to design metrics dashboards and oversight tools that enable Zipline to monitor and improve quality at scale.
• Identify opportunities to automate standardize or streamline processes so that quality improves as the business grows without requiring more manual oversight.
  
  

Training & Capability Enablement

• Partner with Zipline Academy to develop and deliver scalable training programs on safety and quality compliance best practices that ensures ownership at the nest level.
• Drive adoption of new standards processes and tools through effective change management and coaching.
• Ensure knowledge transfer documentation and tools are designed for replicability across new sites and markets.

What Youll Bring

• 4 years of experience in operations excellence quality or safety systems within a regulated industry (aviation logistics healthcare or manufacturing).
• Experience leading continuous improvement or operational excellence programs.
• Proven ability to design systems tools or processes that improve quality and safety.
• Strong project management communication and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Highly proactive in identifying potential risks or gaps before they escalate and confident in flagging them to leadership with actionable solutions.
• Mission-driven adaptable and energized by solving complex operational challenges.
• Certifications in Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence or ISO standards are a plus.

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 ancestry national origin religion or religious creed mental or physical disability medical condition genetic information sex (including pregnancy childbirth and related medical conditions) sexual orientation gender identity gender expression age marital status military or veteran status citizenship or other characteristics protected by state federal or local law or our other policies.

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!