About Zipline
Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.
Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.
About You and The Role
As the Program Manager for our Mechatronics program, you will work at the intersection of cutting-edge engineering, cost-effective supply chain, manufacturing, quality, complex healthcare, food and retail systems, and highly regulated airspaces. Your North Star will be to design and deliver our next-generation platform that we’d be proud to scale worldwide.
We are looking for a versatile and highly technical PM leader, strong in both strategy, execution and communication with proven success in delivering cross-functional, hardware programs efficiently and on-time. At Zipline, Program Management is not only the glue that holds cross-functional teams together but also an empowered decision-making function, driving us forward to achieve our ambitious mission of delivering an autonomous logistics service that serves every human on Earth.
What You'll Do
You will lead our vehicle program which is our biggest, most cross-disciplinary program including all aspects of hardware engineering, reliability testing and supply chain. The program starts with the launch of our next-generation aircraft and followed by the journey to evolve the design and supply chain to achieve the cost, quality and scaled production required to achieve Zipline’s mission. You will partner hand in hand with our VP of Engineering, who is the Directly Responsible Individual for this program ensure timely decisions, burn down risk in the smartest way possible, and lead our teams to hit program deadlines. Here are the types of challenges you’ll tackle within this program:
- Set and communicate program objectives and priorities.
- Interact, integrate, and drive results across cross-functional teams in engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, regulatory, quality, sales, operations, etc.
- Develop, maintain, and communicate the Program Plan ranging from when we will achieve a high level objective to specific release dates for development builds.
- Ensure critical cross-team efforts are well owned (including owning some yourself) such as the layout of our final assembly for optimal operations efficiency, resolving a critical safety issue in the field, or achieving a universally loved delivery experience.
- Lead cross-functional Program and Manufacturing readiness reviews.
- Ensure the Product Development Processes achieve an optimal program speed to critical customer milestones, and be the cross-disciplinary decision maker when exceptions should be made.
- Continuously perform relevant risk and opportunity analyses to stay ahead of the game and address problems before they impact the program.
- Decide if a hardware change will be retrofitted into existing deployed hardware and coordinate the retrofit with minimal customer impact across our worldwide operations.
- Provide clear updates at both the working and executive level.
- Create and refine processes and templates across Programs, including things like change control, product development process, scheduling, risk tracking, etc.
What You'll Bring
- You have 10+ years of professional experience with an impressive track record of program managing and shipping multiple complex electro-mechanical and/or hardware programs with a large number of technical and supply chain risks.
- You have run a large program (more than 50 people) and know what great communication looks like in a program that is too large for you to be close to every member of the team.
- A bachelor’s or additional degrees in engineering or related fields.
- Multidisciplinary technical background – be comfortable in EE, ME, SW and Operational domains.
- Excellent written and verbal communication and presentation skills.
- You have a positive, can-do attitude that you harness to rally a team to make impressive progress day after day.
- You naturally identify the critical path in a program and jump in with both feet to support the team in driving that critical path effort.
- You have succeeded in a program management role with deep ownership of the outcome of projects.
- You have the engineering background and experience to effectively lead highly technical programs.
- You have worked in fast-paced, high-growth environments like startups.
- You have an entrepreneurial disposition; you are able to creatively solve hard problems, get up to speed quickly, and bring a curious, can-do zest to all the challenges you face.
What Else You Need to Know
This is an in-office role based out of our South San Francisco HQ.
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!
