Fleet Configuration & Change Manager

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 You and The Role

Are you passionate about pioneering the deployment of real-world robotics? Ensuring that Zipline continues to push the envelope of innovation by rapidly deploying, learning, and iterating on autonomous aircraft? Do you have a supreme attention to detail, with a penchant for efficient process design and management? The Fleet Configuration & Change Manager sits at the intersection of hardware and business operations: ensuring Zipline’s operational fleet remains process-capable that engineering innovations get deployed to the field in a manner that optimizes the impact to the business.

This is a cross-functional role that interfaces with hardware engineering, reliability, maintenance operations, and business strategy. You will be responsible for strategically planning the makeup of the autonomous aircraft fleet, and evaluating tradeoffs for the business with respect to hardware releases, retrofit campaigns, and fleet allocation. You will manage the variations across the fleet and ensure that new hardware configurations are deployed in a controlled and organized manner.

What You'll Do

The Fleet Configuration & Change manager determines which existing  assets in the P2 Fleet (ziplines, pods, docks, and dropboxes) should receive hardware upgrades, which should not, the appropriate timescales for each. and how these configurations should be allocated across sites, partners, and business needs.

• Hardware change evaluation:

• Review proposed hardware changes to Zipline’s fleet prior to manufacturing cut-in for feasibility and operational process readiness

• Evaluate the costs & benefits of deploying proposed hardware changes to the operating fleet; define fleet allocation plans and retrofit campaigns with these insights

• Operational readiness management:

• Project-manage the operations team’s review of new hardware adjustments – the Commercial Operations Readiness Review - to confirm field-readiness; channel negative feedback to the responsible engineers.

• Build the system to manage Operations’ review of all incoming tickets / concepts from Engineering; program manage the timely feedback and decision on proposals.

• Program-manage the fixtures and tools and testers required to execute and support a hardware change and ensure clear ownership of any changes required to the tooling, parts, and workflows of operations.

• Retrofit execution: Plan and sequence retrofits as necessary; ensure readiness for parts supply, labor resourcing and training, and progress tracking.

• Fleet configuration management: Track and manage asset configuration allocations across commercial and partner locations.

What You'll Bring

Necessary qualifications

• Several years leading complex hardware change deployment, fleet configuration, maintenance planning, NPI, sustaining engineering, or technical operations programs.

• Working knowledge of engineering change control: BOMs, part and revision control, effectivity, ECOs, compatibility, production cut-ins, and retrofit embodiment.

• Strong quantitative judgment: lifecycle cost, capacity impact, reliability benefit, maintenance burden, inventory exposure, and scenario analysis.

• Track record of success building and implementing new operating processes: intake, prioritization, decision gates, reviews, communications, and escalation paths.

• Exceptional data and record discipline. In this role, configuration accuracy is operationally and potentially regulatorily consequential.

• Clear written and verbal communication with both engineers and business leaders.

• Willingness and ability to spend time with field technicians, operators, production teams, and deployed sites to deeply understand fleet allocation impacts.

Desired qualifications

• Familiarity with reliability engineering, maintainability, spares planning, technical publications, training readiness, and regulatory change incorporation.

• SQL, spreadsheet modeling, BI, or other analytical skills sufficient to independently evaluate fleet scenarios.

What Else You Need To Know

The starting salary for this role is $130,000 - $160,000.

Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.

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!

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.