Metro Launch Manager

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline is seeking a Metro Launch Manager to lead expansion into new markets, owning the strategy and execution that turns a priority metro into a functioning delivery network. You will coordinate across Zipline teams, resolve hard questions, and develop a scalable metro-entry playbook for future launches.

This senior individual contributor role requires mobilizing teams, securing approvals, and driving readiness through to go-live and operational handoff.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in market expansion, launch, operations, logistics, marketplaces, or complex cross-functional programs.
• An ability to translate ambiguous market opportunities into actionable launch plans.
• Strong analytical mindset with data-driven decision making and stakeholder management.

Responsibilities

• Own the multi-quarter metro roadmap and Metro Launch Plan; manage milestones and forecasts.
• Design entry network with planning and real estate; evaluate sites and opportunities.
• Lead viability assessments with cross-functional teams to resolve permitting, airspace, and product-fit questions.
• Shape go-to-market with commercial leaders; define launch coverage and success metrics.
• Drive the metro critical path across development, hiring, fleet, and operations to go-live.
• Recommend site activation through Launch Activation Reviews; balance readiness with time-to-launch.
• Evolve the metro launch playbook and readiness gates for future metros.

Skills

Market expansion

Launch operations

Cross-functional leadership

Analytical modeling

SQL

Geospatial analysis

Scripting

Tools

SQL

Geospatial analysis

Scripting

Job description

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.

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

As Metro Launch Manager, you will lead Zipline into new markets. You will own the strategy and execution that turn a priority metro into a successful delivery network: where to open first, how sites and partners come together, and how the network develops beyond launch.

This is a senior individual contributor role with the independence to set direction and the accountability to deliver it. You will mobilize teams across Zipline, resolve the hardest questions standing between market opportunity and customer launch, and carry the plan through to stable operations. You will also build the metro-entry playbook that local leaders can adapt and every future launch can build on.

What You'll Do

• Own the multi-quarter metro roadmap and Metro Launch Plan of Record. Set scope, milestones, dependencies, and confidence; keep forecasts and commitments distinct and the company aligned as plans change.
• Design the entry network with Network Planning and Real Estate: first-wave sites, coverage, connectivity, maintenance support, and expansion waves. Preserve alternatives and redirect effort as jurisdictions or site opportunities change.
• Lead metro viability assessments with Government Affairs, Community Engagement, Regulatory, Product, and Systems Engineering. Use field research, data, and practical models to resolve permitting, airspace, serviceability, and product-fit questions—even where no specialist owner exists. Separate current capability from roadmap dependencies.
• Shape the go-to-market with central and local commercial leaders and their restaurant, enterprise, and strategic partners. Define launch selection, customer coverage, and success measures; partner with Communications and Marketing on a launch approach grounded in actual readiness.
• Drive the metro critical path across development, construction, hiring, fleet, maintenance, flight operations, and marketplace readiness. Resolve tradeoffs, secure functional commitments and approvals, and lead readiness reviews through go-live and operational handoff, while Site and Partner Launch own detailed execution.
• Recommend which construction-ready sites come off the bench through Launch Activation Reviews, securing approval and placing sites into launch quarters. Keep activation decisions separate from customer-launch clearance.
• Steward the pipeline-based projected network until Network Planning is staffed. Show where we could launch without implying commitment, and turn the strongest options into actionable launch recommendations.
• Own and evolve the metro launch playbook. Establish entry principles and readiness gates, test launch hypotheses, and use early customer, partner, and operating results to improve subsequent waves and future metros.

What You'll Bring

• 6+ years of experience in market expansion, launch, operations, logistics, marketplaces, or complex cross-functional programs.
• A record of taking ambiguous market or operating challenges from strategy through execution, with meaningful ownership of the outcome.
• The leadership to align senior stakeholders, make sound tradeoffs, and turn competing priorities into decisions and action without formal authority.
• Commercial and product judgment, backed by hands‑on analysis. You can build useful models with imperfect data; spreadsheet fluency is expected, with SQL, geospatial analysis, or scripting a plus.
• Clear communication and a builder’s instinct: you create playbooks and operating mechanisms that others can use, not processes that depend on you.
• Willingness to travel and learn directly from markets, partners, and field teams. Experience with regulated operations, infrastructure, autonomous systems, or real estate development is valuable.

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, 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. We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self‑identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.