Technical Program Manager - Droid (Structures & Mechanisms)

The Robot Age; South San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline in South San Francisco is seeking a Technical Program Manager to own the Droid structures and mechanisms portion of a robotics delivery system. This role blends hardware strategy with autonomy considerations, balancing reliability, manufacturability, and field operations.

You will own schedules, manage risks, and coordinate with engineering and operations to ensure hardware readiness. You will translate product decisions into deployable hardware while maintaining milestones and tradeoffs.

Qualifications

• Technical program management experience with hardware, robotics, aerospace, or mechanisms.
• Ability to communicate tradeoffs across engineering, operations, and leadership.
• Strong ownership of schedules, dependencies, risks, and execution details.
• Onsite work in South San Francisco.

Responsibilities

• Manage schedules, dependencies, and risks for Droid structures and mechanisms work.
• Coordinate engineering and operations stakeholders around hardware readiness.
• Keep cross-functional teams aligned on milestones and tradeoffs.
• Help convert product and engineering decisions into deployable delivery hardware.

Skills

Hardware-focused TPM

Cross-team communication

Schedule ownership

Onsite work

Job description

What the role actually is

Zipline is hiring a technical program manager for Droid structures and mechanisms. The role is tied to the physical delivery system, where hardware choices have direct effects on autonomy, reliability, production, and field operations.

This is program ownership in the mechanical heart of a robotics product rather than a purely software roadmap role.

What you would work on

• Manage schedules, dependencies, and risks for Droid structures and mechanisms work
• Coordinate engineering and operations stakeholders around hardware readiness
• Keep cross-functional teams aligned on milestones and tradeoffs
• Help convert product and engineering decisions into deployable delivery hardware

What they are asking for

• Technical program management experience with complex hardware, robotics, aerospace, or mechanisms
• Ability to communicate tradeoffs across engineering, operations, and leadership
• Strong ownership of schedules, dependencies, risks, and execution details
• Ability to work onsite in South San Francisco

Why this one is worth a look

Robotics program roles get more interesting when they sit close to the physical system. Zipline's Droid work has to balance mechanisms, autonomy needs, manufacturing, maintenance, and customer-facing reliability.