Senior Manager / Director - Ground Systems Construction

Job Description

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.

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 this role

Zipline is looking for a Sr Manager / Director of Construction to build, grow, and lead the construction function for Ground Systems Deployments. This person will be accountable for how Zipline builds charging sites and related ground infrastructure across many projects, metros, and future markets.

This is both a tactical execution and strategic planning role. You will hire, mentor, monitor, and manage construction managers who own schedule, cost, quality, safety, contractor coordination, and field execution across a broad portfolio of projects. You may also help define and eventually own an internal self-perform capability, including general contracting and trade resources where it makes sense for Zipline to build directly.

The right leader will define the construction strategy for Zipline: when to use national or regional general contractors, when to self-perform, how to build strategic contractor relationships, how to manage trade capacity, how to keep construction aligned with design and launch needs, and how to make construction a scalable operating function rather than a project-by-project scramble.

What you'll do

• Build and lead the Ground Systems Construction function responsible for delivering Zipline charging sites and related ground infrastructure across active and future markets.
• Hire, mentor, manage, and raise the bar for construction managers who own site-level schedule, cost, quality, safety, contractor coordination, and field execution.
• Define Zipline's construction strategy, including where to use general contractors, where to use specialty trades, where to build self-perform capability, and how the model should evolve as volume increases.
• Own construction execution outcomes across a portfolio of projects, including schedule reliability, cost control, safety performance, quality, change management, closeout, and readiness for launch or operations.
• Source, evaluate, negotiate with, and manage strategic relationships with general contractors and trade partners across the country.
• Partner closely with Finance, Legal, Procurement, Design Execution, Design Concepts, Project Engineering, Launch, Service Operations, Real Estate, and Field Operations to keep construction aligned with business needs and risk controls.
• Build the systems needed to scale construction: project controls, reporting cadence, cost tracking, schedule reviews, contractor scorecards, change-order discipline, safety expectations, quality standards, and escalation paths.
• Decide when field issues require contractor action, design change, engineering support, commercial escalation, or leadership intervention, and drive those issues to closure.
• Establish clear role boundaries between construction managers, design managers, project engineers, general contractors, trades, launch teams, and service teams.
• Capture lessons from completed projects and turn them into better standards, better contractor scopes, better construction methods, and better site designs.
• Develop the construction organization and partner network needed to support more sites, more metros, higher deployment velocity, and increasing technical complexity.

What you'll bring

• Significant experience leading construction for physical infrastructure, distributed site rollout, industrial facilities, EV charging, commercial solar, logistics infrastructure, retail/site development, data centers, or similar capital projects.
• Experience managing construction managers or project teams responsible for schedule, cost, quality, safety, contractor coordination, and field execution.
• Strong understanding of construction delivery models, including general contractor management, trade partner management, design-bid-build, design-build, owner-managed construction, and self-perform tradeoffs.
• A track record of building or improving a construction function, not just managing individual projects.
• Experience sourcing, evaluating, negotiating with, and managing general contractors or trade partners across multiple regions or markets.
• Strong commercial and operational judgment around budgets, forecasts, contracts, change orders, schedule risk, quality issues, claims, and contractor performance.
• Ability to work closely with Finance, Legal, Procurement, Design, Engineering, Launch, and Operations while remaining clearly accountable for construction outcomes.
• Practical safety leadership and high expectations for field execution quality.
• Ability to create scalable process without overburdening field teams: reporting cadence, project controls, contractor scorecards, handoff routines, closeout expectations, and lessons-learned loops.
• Willingness to spend time in the field, inspect the work directly, and lead through real construction constraints rather than only through meetings.
• High ownership, direct communication, low ego, and the ability to make clear decisions when schedule, cost, quality, and partner constraints are in tension.

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $175,000 - $250,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. 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; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!