--- title: 'Program Lead, Support Operations & Partner Experience at Zipline' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/program-lead-support-operations-partner-experience-zipline-south-san-francisco-geccf2zf1krt' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-18' --- # Program Lead, Support Operations & Partner Experience at Zipline - **Company:** Zipline - **Location:** South San Francisco, CA - **Posted:** 2026-09-21 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-18 - **Apply:** https://www.zipline.com/open-roles/7997651003?gh_jid=7997651003 ## 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’s Support team helps deliver a reliable, responsive experience for customers, merchants, partners, and internal operations teams. As Zipline scales its autonomous delivery service across marketplaces, retail, healthcare, and enterprise partnerships, Support plays a critical role in identifying issues, improving service quality, and turning operational insights into better products and processes. As Program Lead, Support Operations & Partner Experience, you will lead cross-functional programs that improve the support experience for Zipline customers and partner sites. You will work closely with Support, Operations, Product, Engineering, Commercial, and partner teams to identify opportunities, prioritize improvements, and launch scalable tools and workflows. The ideal candidate combines strong business and technical judgment with exceptional program management, communication, and operational discipline. You are comfortable working in a fast-moving environment, navigating ambiguity, building trusted partnerships, and driving measurable improvements across multiple teams and regions. ## What You'll Do - Program and operational planning: Gather insights from Support, partners, regional teams, and business stakeholders to identify needs, prioritize opportunities, and shape new programs, processes, and product improvements. - Scale partner business processes: Build repeatable workflows for partner onboarding, financial inquiries, payments, 1099-related processes, account administration, and other sales-adjacent operational needs. - Operationalize launches: Lead testing, UAT, experimentation, training, communications, compliance tracking, and feedback collection for new products, features, policies, and Support capabilities. - Create end-to-end ownership: Define intake paths, responsibilities, service expectations, controls, escalation paths, and handoffs for work spanning Support, Commercial, Finance, Legal, Product, and Operations. - Drive execution: Manage multiple complex initiatives, maintaining clear milestones, risks, dependencies, decisions, and ownership through launch and steady-state operations. - Use data to improve performance: Build reporting across volume, service levels, resolution, quality, partner experience, utilization, efficiency, and cost. Translate trends into clear actions and business recommendations. - Build scalable operating systems: Create and maintain SOPs, playbooks, business requirements, training materials, knowledge resources, dashboards, and executive operating reviews. - Improve customer and partner experiences: Represent frontline needs in product and business decisions, identify recurring friction, and partner with relevant teams to address root causes. - Optimize and automate: Identify bottlenecks and manual work, then implement practical process, tooling, AI, and automation improvements that increase quality and efficiency. ## What You'll Bring Required Qualifications - 7+ years of experience in Support Operations, Partner Operations, Program Management, Product Operations, Business Operations, Strategy and Operations, or a related field. - Demonstrated experience building and scaling cross-functional business processes from concept through ongoing operation. - Strong business and technical judgment, with the ability to create structure and make progress in ambiguous environments. - Experience influencing technical, operational, commercial, and financial stakeholders without direct authority. - Strong analytical skills and experience using data to evaluate performance, identify trends, and guide decisions. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive updates, operating reviews, and operational documentation. - Strong attention to detail, ownership, and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment. - Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience. ## Preferred Qualifications - 5+ years of experience in Support Operations, Partner Operations, Product Operations, or a similar function. - Experience supporting merchants, independent contractors, enterprise customers, healthcare providers, retailers, or other business partners. - Experience with partner onboarding, payments, financial issue resolution, tax-document workflows, account administration, or sales operations. - Experience with product-development cycles, UAT, experimentation, change management, and operational readiness. - Practical AI fluency, including the ability to automate workflows without dedicated Engineering support. - Experience independently managing four to five complex, multi-quarter initiatives across multiple teams or regions. - Experience structuring QBRs and strategy narratives for Director-level and executive stakeholders. - Experience using SQL, Snowflake, business intelligence tools, support platforms, CRM systems, Jira, or Confluence. - Familiarity with logistics, marketplaces, delivery operations, healthcare, retail, aviation, or another operationally complex environment. - MBA or another relevant advanced degree. What Else You Need To Know The starting cash range for this role is $160,000–$210,000. Final compensation will depend on experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and expected impact. The total compensation package may also include equity, discretionary bonuses, and employee benefits. 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. ## 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) ## Other roles at Zipline - [Hardware Test Technician, Avionics](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-test-technician-avionics-zipline-south-san-francisco-p5cvzv7pwjqv) — South San Francisco, CA - [PLM & Configuration Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/plm-configuration-manager-zipline-south-san-francisco-pm2st8m7ej2v) — South San Francisco, CA - [Mobile Test Site Project Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/mobile-test-site-project-manager-zipline-esparto-eajf10eqkn5h) — Esparto, CA / Half Moon Bay, CA / South San Francisco, CA - [Senior Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manufacturing-engineer-zipline-south-san-francisco-e0phbz4e2rk4) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer - Long Range Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-electrical-engineer-long-range-platform-zipline-south-san-francisco-aj84gq64gvsh) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Towers](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-electrical-engineer-towers-zipline-south-san-francisco-21pe6rqvm5ky) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Dropbox](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-electrical-engineer-dropbox-zipline-south-san-francisco-h830ctztcqtc) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Avionics](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-electrical-engineer-avionics-zipline-south-san-francisco-911tt0ycfrvx) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior Power Electronics Engineer - Ground Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-power-electronics-engineer-ground-systems-zipline-south-san-francisco-37x2bvp3esqk) — South San Francisco, CA - [Senior/Staff Electrical Engineer, Ground Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-electrical-engineer-ground-systems-zipline-south-san-francisco-ca3ct8d8pz0g) — South San Francisco, CA