Launch Manager

Responsibilities

• Build and manage the critical path for each launch, integrating workstreams across infrastructure, permitting, flight operations, maintenance, partner readiness, community engagement, regulatory, and commercial teams.
• Act as the launch captain on the ground: identify blockers, drive decisions, escalate tradeoffs, and keep teams aligned on what must happen next.
• Build the systems, tools, operating rhythms, and readiness mechanisms that make launches safe, fast, repeatable, and scalable.
• Translate cross-functional requirements across infrastructure, permitting, flight operations, maintenance, partner readiness, community engagement, and commercial teams into integrated launch plans.
• Serve as the program owner for launch outcomes across assigned markets, driving alignment, accountability, tradeoff decisions, and executive visibility.
• Use field results, operational data, and launch retrospectives to improve processes and remove systemic bottlenecks.
• Develop scalable playbooks, dashboards, escalation paths, and standard operating models for new metros, partners, and verticals.
• Partner closely with field teams to ensure launch systems are practical, adopted, and effective in real operating environments.
• Drive the transition from launch to stable operations, ensuring sites are operationally ready, measurable, and set up to scale.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience in operations, launch, deployment, infrastructure rollout, logistics, marketplace expansion, or physical network scaling.
• A track record of owning complex launches or rollouts where success depended on aligning many teams, resolving real-world blockers, and driving to a go-live date.
• High agency and strong follow-through. When something is stuck, you find the owner, clarify the decision, unblock the path, and keep moving.
• Strong field judgment. You know how to distinguish a plan that looks good in a meeting from a launch that is actually ready.
• The ability to switch altitude quickly: from executive updates a

Benefits

Additional Information

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 seeking a Launch Manager to lead the end-to-end deployment of Charging Points and the partner ecosystem that enables the network to scale. This is a senior, highly cross-functional role responsible for driving sites from approval through first delivery and into stable operations. This is not a coordination role. It is a launch ownership role. You will turn complex, cross-functional dependencies into clear plans, drive teams through execution, surface and resolve blockers, make tradeoffs visible, and ensure new capacity comes online safely, quickly, and repeatably. You will operate at two altitudes. First, you will be close to the field, working through the details that determine whether launches actually happen. Second, you will build the systems, playbooks, dashboards, readiness gates, and operating rhythms that allow Zipline to scale launches across metros, partners, and future verticals. The right person is a high-agency operator-builder: calm under pressure, energized by ambiguity, comfortable with frequent travel and hands-on field execution, and excited to build the launch engine for one of the most ambitious autonomy and infrastructure networks in the world. Please note that this role requires frequent travel to cities throughout the U.S. to directly support launches of charging locations and partner sites.

Your Match

How well this role fits your profile.

Company Intel

What employees say

Worked at flyzipline? Share your experience