---
title: 'Strategic Finance Manager, Operations at Zipline'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-finance-manager-operations-zipline-south-san-francisco-sqp0c1kjg1c7'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-18'
---

# Strategic Finance Manager, Operations at Zipline 

- **Company:** Zipline 
- **Location:** South San Francisco, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-08-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-18
- **Apply:** https://www.zipline.com/open-roles/7828301003?gh_jid=7828301003

## 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

We are looking for a Strategic Finance Manager, Operations to serve as a senior finance partner to Zipline’s operations focused on our next generation precise delivery platform.

In this role, you will help Zipline understand and improve the financial performance of its operations across maintenance, flight operations, material planning, supply chain, demand planning, customer support, safety, flight test, real estate, ground systems, launch, and business operations.

You will own core planning and reporting processes, including forecast versus actuals, annual forecasting and consolidation, operating performance reviews, and high priority ad hoc models that support leadership decisions. You will work directly with business partners to understand their goals, processes, constraints, and tradeoffs, then translate that operating context into clear financial insight.

The right person will be expected to take ambiguous operational questions, structure the analysis, build the model, pressure test assumptions, align stakeholders, and help drive decisions.

## What You'll Do

- Serve as a strategic finance partner to Global Operations leaders across teams such as Maintenance, Flight Operations, Material Planning, Supply Chain, Logistics, Customer Support, Safety, Flight Test, Business Operations, Real Estate, Ground Systems, and Launch.
- Own forecast versus actuals for multiple teams within Operations, including variance analysis, KPI reporting, financial performance reviews, and clear communication of business drivers.
- Lead annual planning and quarterly forecasting and consolidation processes, partnering with business leaders to translate operating plans, resource requirements, and strategic priorities into financial plans.
- Build and maintain driver-based models for operating forecasts, long-range planning, unit economics, site performance, launch economics, utilization, labor, materials, support costs, and operational efficiency.
- Develop high priority ad hoc analyses and decision models for leadership, including questions related to growth, margin, resource allocation, launch timing, operating model design, and cost optimization.
- Partner with operators to understand the broader financial implications of their goals, processes, constraints, and proposed changes.
- Analyze cost drivers across labor, maintenance, materials, fleet operations, ground systems, support, real estate, site preparation, launch costs, utilization, and delivery economics.
- Identify opportunities to improve margin, reduce cost, increase utilization, improve forecast accuracy, and scale operations more efficiently.
- Build repeatable reporting tools, dashboards, and planning workflows that improve visibility, reduce manual work, and increase accountability.
- Partner with Accounting, Procurement, Supply Chain, Data, Product, Engineering, and Operations to improve planning processes, reporting accuracy, spend visibility, and decision making speed.
- Translate complex analyses into clear recommendations for senior finance and operations leaders.
- Proactively surface risks, decision points, and tradeoffs rather than waiting for perfect data or explicit direction.

## What You'll Bring

- 5–10 years of experience in strategic finance, corporate finance, operations finance, FP&A, investment banking, private equity, consulting, business operations, or another highly analytical role.
- Deep financial modeling experience, including forecasting, scenario analysis, unit economics, P&L analysis, capex and opex planning, investment evaluation, and return-on-investment analysis.
- Strong financial judgment and the ability to evaluate tradeoffs across growth, margin, capital allocation, operational scale, timing, and complexity.
- Advanced Excel or Google Sheets skills, with the ability to build clean, dynamic, scalable models that others can understand and use.
- Strong business-partnership skills, including the ability to work directly with operators, understand operational realities, and translate them into financial insight.
- Experience owning forecasting, annual planning, consolidation, variance analysis, and recurring business-performance reviews.
- Comfort working with large datasets and partnering with Data teams. Experience with SQL, Snowflake, dbt, Looker, Mode, Tableau, Hex, Python, or R is a plus.
- Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain financial tradeoffs to non-finance partners and operational realities to Finance leaders.
- The ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, work with imperfect data, and create structure where processes are still being built.
- High ownership, low ego, and strong curiosity. You are willing to ask basic questions, go deep on operational details, and move work forward across teams without formal authority.
- Experience in hardware, logistics, aviation, robotics, manufacturing, supply chain, fleet operations, healthcare devices, physical infrastructure, or another operations-intensive business is strongly preferred, but not required.

You May Be a Strong Fit If

- You are energized by business problems where the answer is not obvious and the data is not perfectly packaged.
- You can move fluidly between a detailed financial model, a conversation with an operator, anda recommendation to senior leadership.
- You know how to build models that are rigorous enough to support major decisions but practical enough to be used by the business.
- You are comfortable challenging assumptions while still building trust with business partners.
- You want to understand how the operation actually works, not just how it appears in a spreadsheet.
- You can distinguish between spending that accelerates scale and spending that adds complexity without enough return.

What Else You Need To Know

The starting cash range for this role is $140,000 - $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 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, 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)

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