PLM & Configuration Manager
Zipline · South San Francisco, California, USA ·
- Seniority
- Lead
- Experience
- 5+ years
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
As the PLM & Configuration Lead on our Configuration & Change Management team, you will define and own the configuration management framework that ensures product integrity from early engineering development through mass production and field operations. You will set the strategic direction for how we identify parts, structure bills of materials, manage complex configurations, and govern product releases so hardware changes are accurate, traceable, and ready for implementation.
You will serve as the authoritative voice on BOM governance and configuration baseline control, partnering closely with Hardware Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Program Management, and Field Service teams. You will make foundational decisions about part definitions, configuration and variant management, and the relationships between engineering, manufacturing, and service BOMs.
This is a strategic product-data and process role, not a software engineering role. You will translate business needs into functional requirements and partner closely with the the team building our configuration management systems; Application Software Engineering owns the tooling roadmap, technical architecture, integrations, and development.
What You'll Do
- Establish and enforce configuration identification standards, part-numbering schemas, naming conventions, and revision control practices across engineering and manufacturing teams.
- Define multi-level BOM structures and the relationships between engineering BOMs, manufacturing BOMs, and service BOMs.
- Establish standards for BOM accuracy, revisions, alternates, effectivity, and traceability across design, manufacturing, and service engineering.
- Partner with Supply Chain and Manufacturing to assess how engineering changes affect component availability, supplier qualification, and existing inventory, and define what business tools are needed to communicate inventory disposition plans.
- Work closely with the PLM Technical Lead and development team to provide functional requirements, product-data structure definitions, and business logic that guide custom development.
- Lead User Acceptance Testing (UAT), validate that delivered capabilities meet the original business intent, and lead functional troubleshooting.
- Identify and resolve product-data integrity issues across PLM, ERP, and related systems, partnering with Software Engineering when resolution requires tooling changes.
- Develop configuration and change-management metrics, audits, and cross-functional improvements that reduce release errors and engineering change cycle time, improve traceability and first-pass build accuracy, and prevent configuration management from becoming a production bottleneck.
- Set configuration management standards and provide guidance to Change Analysts and engineering teams on complex BOM, release, and product-data issues, driving consistent practices across the organization.
What You'll Bring
- 5+ years of experience in engineering product configuration management, engineering change management, or product lifecycle management within hardware or consumer electronics development.
- Experience establishing and governing BOM structures, part-numbering schemas, naming conventions, and revision control processes across hardware programs.
- Deep knowledge of hardware release practices, including lifecycle states, approvals, release packages, CAD and drawing releases, manufacturing documentation, and audit trails.
- Experience establishing configuration management practices, with the judgment to make foundational decisions and explain tradeoffs across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and service.
- A strong understanding of complex product structures, variant configuration rules, effectivity controls, and the relationships between engineering, manufacturing, and service BOMs.
- Experience with PLM systems such as Teamcenter, Agile, Windchill, Arena, or equivalent for configuration baseline management and engineering change workflows.
- A track record of defining configuration management business requirements, partnering with software teams on supporting capabilities, and driving cross-functional adoption across large engineering organizations.
- Experience integrating configuration management processes with manufacturing execution systems and supply chain planning tools.
- Strong cross-functional leadership, clear communication, and the ability to make and carry through decisions with minimal oversight.
Success in 6–12 Months
- Define a configuration and variant management strategy that will enable clear part identification and revision control as Zipline scales.
- Establish Zipline’s approach to engineering, manufacturing, and service BOM structures, with clear ownership and traceability between them.
- Deliver functional requirements for priority PLM capabilities and validate delivered functionality through UAT in partnership with Software Engineering.
What Else You Need To Know
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.