Operations Excellence 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
The Operations Excellence Manager plays a critical role in enhancing the efficiency, quality, and safety of Zipline’s operations. In 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. You’ll 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, you’ll 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 You’ll Do
Quality & Safety Governance Systems
- Design, maintain, and evolve Zipline’s 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 You’ll 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!