Metro Launch Manager

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.

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.

• 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.

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