---
title: 'Executive Assistant, Chief Hardware Officer & Head of Autonomy at Zipline'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/executive-assistant-chief-hardware-officer-head-of-autonomy-zipline-south-san-czhbczjja0v4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Executive Assistant, Chief Hardware Officer & Head of Autonomy at Zipline 

- **Company:** Zipline 
- **Location:** South San Francisco California, United States
- **Posted:** 2026-06-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://www.zipline.com/open-roles/7772735003?gh_jid=7772735003

## 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 You and The Role

Zipline is looking for an exceptional Executive Assistant to support Jo Mardall, our Chief Hardware Officer, and CJ Moore, our Head of Autonomy. Together, Jo and CJ lead some of the most technically complex and operationally critical work at Zipline: aircraft reliability, hardware execution, flight software, autonomy, release readiness, fleet health, and the systems that allow Zipline to scale safely.

This is not a traditional administrative support role. You will sit close to the technical operating heartbeat of the company, helping two senior leaders stay focused, prepared, and effective across a fast-moving mix of engineering reviews, fleet health forums, release decisions, incident follow-ups, recruiting, executive discussions, and cross-functional escalations.

The right person for this role is highly organized, calm under pressure, technically curious, and comfortable operating in ambiguity. You do not need to be an engineer, but you do need to be able to follow technical conversations well enough to understand what matters, who owns what, what needs to happen next, and when something needs to be escalated.

You will be trusted with sensitive company, technical, people, and operational information. You’ll need excellent judgment, strong written communication, crisp follow-through, and the confidence to work across senior executives, engineers, program managers, operations leaders, recruiting, People Partners, and field teams.

This role is based at our South San Francisco, CA headquarters.

## What You'll Do

- Partner directly with Jo and CJ to manage their calendars, priorities, commitments, and operating cadence across hardware, autonomy, flight software, fleet reliability, operations, and executive forums.
- Own complex calendar management with strong business judgment, ensuring their time is spent on the highest-impact decisions, escalations, reviews, and team priorities.
- Prepare leaders for technical operating meetings by gathering agendas, context, pre-reads, open decisions, owners, dates, and follow-up items across Slack, Gmail, Drive, Confluence, Jira, and internal systems.
- Help coordinate critical forums such as fleet health reviews, release and validation discussions, hardware/software syncs, architecture reviews, escalation meetings, recruiting debriefs, and executive operating cadences.
- Track follow-ups across technical workstreams, ensuring decisions, owners, deadlines, revisit dates, and open questions do not get lost after fast-moving meetings.
- Support escalation hygiene by helping route the right topics to the right leaders, forums, and timelines while maintaining clear visibility on status and next steps.
- Coordinate complex domestic and international travel, including itineraries, logistics, meeting preparation, and contingency planning.
- Support recruiting and hiring workflows for senior and technical candidates, including interview scheduling, debrief coordination, candidate follow-up, and confidential process management.
- Represent Jo, CJ, and the broader technical leadership team with professionalism, clarity, warmth, and high standards in interactions across Zipline and externally.
- Proactively identify ways to improve how information flows, meetings are prepared, decisions are captured, and follow-through happens across both leaders’ organizations.

## What You'll Bring

- 7+ years of experience as an Executive Assistant, ideally supporting senior technical, engineering, product, operations, hardware, software, robotics, aerospace, manufacturing, or infrastructure leaders.
- Exceptional judgment and discretion, especially when handling confidential technical, operational, recruiting, executive, or people-related information.
- Strong ability to operate in technical environments. You do not need to make technical decisions, but you should be comfortable around topics like aircraft reliability, software releases, validation, hardware root cause analysis, fleet operations, and engineering escalations.
- Excellent calendar, meeting, travel, and logistics management skills in a high-velocity environment with shifting priorities.
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills. You can turn messy discussion into clear follow-up, owners, dates, and next steps.
- High ownership and follow-through. You notice dropped balls, close loops, and keep important work moving without needing constant direction.
- Strong prioritization instincts and the ability to protect executive focus while staying responsive to urgent operational needs.
- Comfort working across executives, senior engineers, program managers, recruiters, People Partners, operations leaders, and field teams.
- Strong attention to detail and a high bar for preparation, accuracy, and reliability.
- A service-oriented mindset with backbone. You are helpful, thoughtful, and proactive, while also comfortable pushing for clarity, protecting priorities, and escalating when needed.
- Energy, resilience, and enthusiasm for supporting leaders whose work directly affects the safety, reliability, and scale of Zipline’s global operations.

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $150,000 - $200,000. Please note that this is a target starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash payment for this role will depend on various factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may include equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; 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 this position's sound but are unsure 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.

## About Zipline 

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zipline is an American robotics company that operates the world’s largest autonomous drone delivery service, transporting medical supplies, food, and retail goods across multiple continents.
- **Entity Type**: Private (early-stage startup)
- **Headquarters**: South San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: March 2014
- **Founders**: Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Keenan Wyrobek, Ryan Oksenhorn, William Hetzler

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Logistics / Drone delivery
- **Target customers**: B2B (healthcare systems, governments, retailers like Walmart and Chipotle) and B2C (home delivery via the Zipline app)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Build the first logistics system that serves all people equally” – initially focused on saving lives by delivering blood and medicine to remote communities, now expanded to instant urban delivery.

## Products & Services
- **Platform 1 (P1)**: Long-range, rural delivery drone. Carries up to 4 lbs, roundtrip range 120+ miles, cruise speed 60 mph. Uses parachute delivery. Designed for enterprise, government, and healthcare supply chains.
- **Platform 2 (P2)**: Urban/suburban home delivery drone. Carries up to 8 lbs, service radius 10 miles (or 24 miles one way), cruise speed 70 mph. Delivers via a tether from up to 300 ft, allowing contactless drop-off. Launched in 2025 and used for food, retail, and health products.
- **Zipping Points**: Modular ground stations that allow businesses to load orders onto drones without specialized equipment.
- **FlightIQ**: Advanced onboard autonomy and perception suite for safe navigation and delivery.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: 2 million commercial deliveries completed (as of January 2026) and 130 million autonomous miles flown.[wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company))[zipline-fact-sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in available sources. Key partners include Walmart, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Crumbl, Blaze Pizza, Wendy’s, and many other restaurant brands. In healthcare, works with more than 5,000 hospitals and health centers.
- **Growth Signals**: Expanded into urban home delivery in 2025 (P2) with service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas and 20+ communities in Dallas-Fort Worth. Obtained FAA authorization for beyond visual line of sight operations. Reports 56% decrease in maternal mortality and 66% decrease in missed malaria treatments in served regions.[zipline-fact-sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Autonomous drone fleet**: One of the world’s largest commercial deployments of autonomous robots, with custom software running on Nvidia chips.
- **FAA approval**: All operations and aircraft are FAA-approved, including pioneering use of Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM).
- **Quieter than road vehicles**: Drones hover high and descend on a tether, generating noise lower than common neighborhood sounds.
- **Extensive testing**: One of the largest aviation testing campaigns, with operations in rain, wind, and storms.
- **Integrated logistics platform**: Beyond drones, Zipline provides warehousing, inventory management, cold chain storage, and fulfillment software.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the Platform 2 urban delivery network across the U.S., particularly through partnerships with major retailers and restaurants.
- Deepening healthcare impact by expanding into new countries and product categories (prescriptions, groceries, convenience items).
- Continuing to reduce delivery times and environmental footprint (0 emissions per delivery, compared to automotive delivery).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture values**: Ownership & Accountability, Direct Feedback & Communication, Continuous Improvement, Customer Obsession, Servant Leadership (as stated on careers page). Emphasis on “Make it matter” and mission-driven work.[careers](https://www.zipline.com/careers)
- **Work environment**: Headquartered in South San Francisco with hardware and software teams. The company assembles its drones in America. Likely on-site given the hardware focus; remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated.
- **Impact**: Opportunity to work on life-saving technology (60,000+ lives saved) and shape the future of instant logistics.
- **Engineering culture**: Build and iterate on autonomous systems, airspace deconfliction, and large-scale robotics deployments.

## Sources
1. [Zipline Careers](https://www.zipline.com/careers)
2. [Zipline Homepage](https://www.zipline.com/)
3. [About Zipline](https://www.zipline.com/about)
4. [Zipline Fact Sheet](https://www.zipline.com/about/zipline-fact-sheet)
5. [Wikipedia - Zipline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company))
6. [Greenhouse Careers Page](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/flyzipline)

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