Technical Program Manager, Deployments
Zipline · Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Accra, Ghana; Kigali, Rwanda; Lagos, Nigeria ·
- Category
- Project management
- Experience
- 6+ years
Lead end-to-end deployments of Zipline’s drone delivery infrastructure in Nigeria, coordinating engineering, logistics, and regulatory teams to launch new distribution centers safely and on schedule.
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
At Zipline, every new distribution center expands access to life-saving and essential deliveries for millions of people. Nigeria represents one of our most important and ambitious deployment programs, with multiple launches requiring close coordination across engineering, supply chain, construction, logistics, regulatory, software, operations, finance, and country leadership.
We’re looking for an exceptional Technical Program Manager to lead the end-to-end execution of Zipline’s Nigeria deployments. You’ll own the integrated deployment plan, operating cadence, tools, and processes required to turn a complex portfolio of launches into predictable, repeatable execution. Working across Nigeria-based and global teams, you’ll identify risks early, drive accountability, resolve cross-functional issues, and ensure every site is ready to launch safely and successfully.
If you’re energized by bringing order to complexity, leading high-stakes programs, and building systems that deliver meaningful real-world impact, we’d love to hear from you.
What You'll Do
Own the Nigeria deployment Operating system
- Own the master deployment plan across multiple concurrent distribution center launches in Nigeria.
- Build and maintain integrated schedules connecting construction, procurement, shipping, hardware commissioning, regulatory approvals, software readiness, operations readiness, hiring, training, and launch execution.
- Maintain a single source of truth for program health, site readiness, key dependencies, and critical-path milestones.
- Continuously improve the deployment operating model so Nigeria launches become faster, more predictable, higher quality, and more cost-effective over time—with the long-term goal of launching new distribution centers in under three months.
Drive cross-functional execution
- Lead execution across Engineering, Supply Chain, Construction, Logistics, Regulatory, Operations, Finance, and Nigeria country teams.
- Identify risks months before they become problems by understanding long-term dependencies across workstreams, and anticipate how decisions made today can accelerate or jeopardize a launch many months down the road.
- Ensure every workstream has clear ownership, accountability, and escalation paths.
- Partner closely with Nigeria leadership to align deployments with customer commitments and country priorities.
- Serve as the central coordination point during commissioning and launch windows, helping teams rapidly resolve issues that threaten launch.
Build systems that scale
- Develop repeatable planning tools, stage gates, dashboards, templates, playbooks, and readiness checklists that contribute to or become the standard for deployments globally.
- Establish metrics that provide clear visibility into schedule performance, launch readiness, execution quality, and deployment cost.
- Raise the execution standard across the company by building planning processes, operating rhythms, and decision-making mechanisms that enable teams to execute consistently at a world-class level.
- Capture lessons from every launch and translate them into improvements for future Nigeria and global deployments.
Lead program governance
- Run weekly program reviews, executive status updates, cross-functional risk reviews, launch readiness reviews, and post-launch retrospectives.
- Provide leaders with concise, decision-oriented reporting that highlights priorities, risks, tradeoffs, and actions.
- Drive timely decisions when priorities compete, assumptions change, or plans fall behind.
What You'll Bring
- 6+ years leading complex technical, operational, infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, deployment, or supply chain programs.
- Proven track record managing large cross-functional programs with multiple organizations and long-lead dependencies, with accountability for schedule, quality, and cost.
- Experience launching complex physical infrastructure or real-world operational systems. Experience in Nigeria or a comparable operating environment is highly preferred.
- Strong program management fundamentals, including integrated planning, critical-path management, risk mitigation, dependency management, and escalation frameworks.
- Demonstrated ability to build operating systems such as integrated schedules, stage gates, readiness criteria, playbooks, and program dashboards.
- Hands-on experience with program and scheduling tools (e.g., Smartsheet, Microsoft Project, Primavera, Jira, Airtable), AI tools, and building dashboards that track KPIs.
- Clear, concise communicator who can simplify technical complexity and coordinate large cross-functional teams without direct authority.
- Ability to work effectively across global, cross-cultural teams and translate between on-the-ground realities and global requirements.
Operating context and traits
- Comfort operating in fast-paced, ambiguous, and safety- or regulation-sensitive environments.
- Willingness to travel regularly within Nigeria and internationally for planning, commissioning, and launch support.
- Flexibility to regularly work across time zones, and outside normal hours during critical launch periods.
- Relentless attention to detail, disciplined cadence-setting, strong judgment, and a bias toward measurable outcomes.
Non-negotiables
- Prior ownership of integrated deployment schedules spanning engineering, procurement or manufacturing, shipping and logistics, and regulatory activities.
- Demonstrated history of improving schedule predictability, launch readiness, deployment cost, or execution quality.
- Experience personally driving complex programs through execution—not only creating plans or facilitating status meetings.
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, 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 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.