Technical Program Manager (Cloud Infra, Data, Validation Platforms)

Zipline; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline seeks a Technical Program Manager for Cloud, Data & Validation Platforms to partner with Cloud Infrastructure, Data, Maps, Autonomy, Validation, and Operations. You will own platform initiatives from cloud migrations to HIL validation, delivering measurable improvements.

Based in South San Francisco, you will be onsite 4+ days/week and ready for occasional launches and incident response, enabling safe, scalable fleet deployments for hospitals, retailers, and government customers.

Qualifications

• Must be able to convene technical and ops stakeholders and drive binding decisions.
• Comfortable with on‑call coordination for launches and occasional off‑hours work.
• Track record of owning platform, cloud infrastructure, data, or validation programs across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Own end‑to‑end programs for platform initiatives spanning cloud/on‑prem migrations, data pipelines, CI/CD latency, and HIL throughput improvements.
• Define goals, milestones, and success criteria with measurable outcomes; report progress to leadership.
• Lead migrations and rollouts, including migration plans, rollback strategies, runbooks, and operator training.
• Set and report program metrics; create dashboards and weekly reviews; ensure rollout readiness gates.

Skills

Stakeholder management

Tradeoff decisions

Cloud & on‑prem infrastructure

On‑call coordination

Developer productivity tooling

Education

BS in CS/EE/Systems Engineering

Tools

CI/CD systems

Telemetry backplanes

Simulation/HIL environments

Job description

Responsibilities

• You will be Zipline’s Technical Program Manager for Cloud, Data & Validation Platforms, part of the Program Management team, and partnering day‑to‑day with Cloud Infrastructure, Data, Maps, Autonomy, Validation, and Operations
• This role owns execution of the platform capabilities that enable safe, repeatable launches and fleet scale: cloud and on‑prem infrastructure, data ingestion and analytics pipelines, CI/CD and developer productivity systems, simulation and hardware‑in‑the‑loop (HIL) validation environments, and telemetry/logging backplanes
• Your work directly affects fleet availability, launch cadence, and safety validation—delays or regressions reduce delivery reliability to hospitals, retailers, and government customers
• You will be based in South San Francisco, expected onsite at least 4 days/week, and available for occasional evening or weekend launch windows and incident response
• Own end‑to‑end programs with clear, measurable outcomes: define goals, milestones, success criteria and delivery schedules for platform initiatives spanning cloud/on‑prem migrations, data pipeline reliability, CI/CD latency reductions, and HIL throughput improvements
• Deliver against concrete targets (examples to own and drive): reduce full build+test cycle by 30% within 6 months for targeted teams; increase simulation/HIL test throughput by 2x in 9 months; raise pipeline data freshness to <5 minutes for critical telemetry; achieve 99.9% platform availability for developer environments during release windows
• Prioritize and sequence work across infra, data, autonomy, validation, product, security and field ops; resolve cross‑team tradeoffs (cost vs. latency vs. fidelity) and enforce rollout readiness gates tied to launch criteria
• Lead migrations and rollouts: own migration plans, rollback strategies, runbooks, operator training, and phased rollout checklists for on‑prem/cloud changes affecting validation or production fleets
• Set and report program metrics: create dashboards, define SLIs/SLOs/SLAs, run weekly program reviews, and present progress, risks and mitigations to senior leadership
• Drive operational readiness and incident follow‑through: coordinate pre‑launch readiness reviews, lead postmortems, and track remediation through closure with owners
• Harden dev productivity and CI/CD: introduce build caching, parallelization, and infra automation to cut developer feedback loops; own vendor vs. build tradeoffs when selecting tooling
• Manage schedules, budgets and resourcing for programs; elevate and unblock at leadership when necessary to meet non‑negotiable launch timelines
• Success in the first 6 months:
• Deliver one major program milestone: complete a phased migration or rollout that improves a tracked metric (e.g., 20–30% build/test reduction or 2x HIL throughput) and pass a launch readiness review
• Establish program dashboards and SLOs for platform health and developer velocity, and run the first three weekly program reviews with cross‑functional owners
• Close at least two high‑priority remediation items from prior postmortems with verified fixes and owner commitments

Qualifications

Ability to make and defend hard tradeoffs on performance, cost, and safety; experienced at convening technical and ops stakeholders and driving binding decisions.

Comfortable with operational intensity: on‑call coordination for launches, occasional off‑hours work for field tests/launches, and travel to test or customer sites (up to 10%).

Minimum 6+ years technical program management experience owning platform, cloud infrastructure, data, or validation programs that served multiple engineering teams; demonstrated ownership of large migrations, automation, or validation initiatives.

Prior experience working with cloud and on‑prem infrastructure, data pipelines (streaming and batch), CI/CD systems, and simulation or HIL validation environments. Direct experience in safety‑critical or regulated systems (aviation, medical devices, or similar) is a plus.

Education/tech background: BS in CS, EE, Systems Engineering or equivalent experience; former software or systems engineer on cloud, infra, data, or validation teams is strongly preferred.

Track record of shipping measurable velocity and reliability improvements with concrete, tracked metrics (examples: % reduction in build/test time, SLO attainment, HIL throughput gains). Be prepared to share baseline→result examples in interviews.

Strong program control skills: risk registers, Gantt/timeline ownership, rollout/rollback plans, runbooks, and structured postmortems with tracked remediation items.

Location requirement: South San Francisco office presence minimum 4 days/week.