Sr. Director Maintenance Operations

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. Sr. Director, MX Operations About You & the Role Zipline is looking for a Senior Director of MX Operations to build the maintenance operating system that lets Zipline scale one of the most complex real-world logistics networks in the world. We operate across aviation, robotics, software, hardware, fulfillment, launch, customer operations, and regulated flight operations. Maintenance is the layer that turns that system from impressive into reliable, repeatable, and economically scalable. This role reports into Operations leadership and owns the execution muscle of Maintenance Operations across our US metros and future expansion sites. The work is hands-on, operationally intense, and highly cross-functional: you will lead regional maintenance leaders, hub maintenance teams, mobile maintenance, tooling and spares processes, work-order execution, return-to-service discipline, and the operating cadence that keeps aircraft, docks, droids, charging infrastructure, and future platforms available for commercial operations. This is not a back-office maintenance role. Zipline is moving from proving the system works to scaling it metro by metro. That means the Senior Director of MX Operations must be able to run today with urgency while building the process, leadership bench, metrics, and culture that can support much higher volume, more sites, longer operating hours, and increasingly complex regulatory and technical requirements. What You'll Do You will own Maintenance Operations as a scaled operating function: aircraft, droid, dock, charger, zipping point, tooling, scheduled maintenance, unscheduled maintenance, mobile maintenance, hub-to-ops handoffs, and return-to-service execution. You will build a maintenance system that is measured, fast, disciplined, and trusted. That includes clear ownership for every grounded asset, tight control of work orders, clean technician assignment, strong shift handoffs, useful dashboards, and a culture where overdue or unstarted work is surfaced quickly and driven to closure. You will lead regional and hub maintenance leaders across active metros, starting with the current US operating footprint and expanding into new metros as Zipline grows. You will set the standard for technician authority, professional culture, safety, documentation, tool control, spares discipline, and execution quality. You will partner tightly with Service Engineering, Flight Operations, Airworthiness, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Product, Finance, Launch, and Field Operations. Your job is to make sure maintenance is never an ambiguous handoff point. When an asset is down, there should be one owner, one plan, one ETA, and one clear path to return to service. You will create and run the maintenance operating cadence: daily fleet health review, hard-deck escalation, scheduled maintenance planning, unscheduled maintenance triage, parts and tooling readiness, staffing and shift coverage, and performance management across leaders and technicians. You will improve the economics of maintenance. That means reducing avoidable downtime, increasing flights per maintenance grounding, improving work-order throughput, making scheduled maintenance predictable, using mobile maintenance intelligently, improving parts availability, and connecting maintenance performance to cost per delivery and fleet availability. You will help prepare Zipline for the next phase of scale: EV3 launch readiness, additional metros, longer operating windows, higher delivery volume, new maintenance points, new charging and docking infrastructure, and eventual future platforms. You should expect to spend meaningful time in the field, especially when a site or process is not yet working. What You'll Bring You have led maintenance, fleet, field service, aviation, robotics, autonomy, manufacturing operations, or similarly high-complexity technical operations at meaningful scale. You have managed managers and built strong frontline leadership teams. You know how to set expectations, inspect execution, coach leaders, and raise the performance bar without creating bureaucracy. You are strong in operational systems: work-order discipline, shift handoffs, tooling control, spares planning, scheduled maintenance, unscheduled maintenance, technician assignment, escalation paths, and return-to-service processes. You are comfortable in regulated or safety-critical environments. Aviation maintenance experience, Part 135/145 familiarity, autonomous systems experience, or other high-reliability operating experience is especially helpful. You can read operational data and turn it into action. You should be fluent in metrics like fleet availability, downtime, SLA breach rate, work-order aging, repeat failure modes, technician productivity, scheduled-maintenance compliance, parts blockers, and cost per delivery. You are technical enough to work credibly with engineers and technicians, but practical enough to know that the job is not done until the asset is back in operations with clean records and a verified fix. You have built standard work before: SOPs, handoff packets, training paths, maintenance playbooks, tool catalogs, escalation rules, dashboards, and management routines that people actually use. You have strong judgment under pressure. When an aircraft is grounded, a metro is short on assets, a work order is stale, parts are missing, or multiple teams are pointing at each other, you can create clarity quickly and move the system forward. You are willing to be in the field. This role will require regular travel to Zipline sites and active time with maintenance teams, not just leadership meetings from HQ. You have very high standards for culture. Zipline needs leaders who are direct, low-ego, high-ownership, safety-minded, and willing to lead from the front. What Else You Need To Know This will be an in-office role based out of our South San Francisco HQ, with regular travel to Zipline operating sites. Travel will vary based on launch, escalation, and field-support needs, but candidates should be comfortable spending significant time with teams in the field. The starting cash range for this role is $200,000 - $350,000. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include equity compensation, overtime pay where applicable, discretionary annual or performance bonuses, sales incentives where applicable, benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance, paid time off, and more. Zipline is an equal opportunity employer.