Commercial Implementation Manager
About this role
Zipline is hiring a Commercial Implementation Manager, full-time, on-site in South San Francisco, California, USA, in the Aerospace sector.
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 building a new logistics system, and bringing that system into the real world requires more than great technology. Every new partner, product, and operating model needs to be translated into a solution that works reliably for the people and businesses using it every day.
The Implementation Manager will own cross-functional programs that turn commercial requirements, new products, and operational learnings into scalable, repeatable partner experiences. You’ll work across the partner lifecycle—from preparing partners for launch and introducing new capabilities to improving how we manage performance, communicate with partners, and continuously improve live operations.
A major initial focus of this role will be building two closely connected capabilities: how we understand and improve partner operational performance, and how we communicate with partners about their operations and Zipline's products. You’ll help make commercial operations more predictable, detect performance issues earlier, create clearer signals from the field, and ensure recurring learnings become better products, processes, training, communications, and partner systems.
This is a hands-on program management role. You’ll move between dashboards and order-level investigations, partner and field feedback, implementation planning, cross-functional working sessions, and partner-facing communications. You won't just identify problems—you'll build the operating mechanisms that clarify why they're happening, who owns the next step, and whether the solution actually worked.
What You'll Do
- Lead commercial implementation programs. Own complex, cross-functional initiatives that translate commercial or product requirements into successful partner operations, from planning and readiness through rollout, stabilization, and continuous improvement.
- Build scalable implementation models. Define the processes, milestones, ownership, dependencies, tools, and success criteria required to turn new solutions into repeatable operating models.
- Build Zipline's partner communications program. Develop a strategy for what partners need to know, when they need to know it, who should communicate it, and through which channels—from product and process changes to performance, operational incidents, and day-to-day updates.
- Create partner performance operating rhythms. Build and own mechanisms for reviewing partner and site health, surfacing meaningful performance trends, tracking issues, and following through on actions.
- Understand what's happening in live operations. Use dashboards, order-level investigations, field input, partner feedback, and customer support signals to identify emerging problems and distinguish isolated incidents from systemic issues.
- Drive root-cause clarity and action. Bring the right teams together to understand why recurring issues are happening, establish ownership, manage actions and risks, and verify that fixes actually improve performance.
- Turn operational learnings into durable improvements. Maintain and prioritize a continuous improvement backlog based on customer impact, partner impact, frequency, severity, and operational cost—and turn recurring issues into product improvements, playbooks, training, processes, tooling, or partner coaching.
- Launch new products and capabilities with partners. Partner with Product and other teams to translate new features, tools, and operational processes into implementation plans covering readiness, communications, training, adoption, and post-launch follow-up.
- Develop implementation playbooks and tools. Create templates, checklists, workflows, documentation, communications, and other resources that make execution more consistent as Zipline adds partners, products, and markets.
- Be the connective tissue across teams. Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Analytics, Field Operations, Partner Support, Partnerships, and other Commercial teams to translate field signals and commercial requirements into clear priorities and execution.
- Close the loop. Measure outcomes after implementation, understand gaps between the intended and actual partner experience, and feed those learnings into future implementations.
What You'll Bring
- Strong operational judgment and an ability to make sense of messy, ambiguous problems.
- A track record of owning cross-functional programs from problem discovery through implementation and measurable improvement.
- Strong project and program management fundamentals, including requirements gathering, project planning, dependency and risk management, action follow-up, stakeholder alignment, and executive communication.
- Comfort working with data, dashboards, and detailed operational investigations, paired with the judgment to distinguish anecdotes from systemic issues.
- Excellent communication skills and an ability to translate complex product, technical, or operational information into clear working-team plans, leadership updates, and partner-facing narratives.
- The ability to create clarity and accountability across teams you don't directly manage.
- A hands-on operating style: you're willing to dive deeply into the details, but your goal is to turn what you learn into repeatable systems that scale.
- Comfort moving between strategy and execution—you can define what a program should become and then build the mechanisms required to make it real.
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in implementation, program management, partner operations, launch operations, process improvement, product operations, logistics, or a similarly cross-functional role.
- Experience leading complex implementations or operational programs in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
Description from Zipline's official posting. Always confirm details on the company careers page.
About Zipline
Zipline
Drone delivery company operating commercial medical and consumer routes globally. South San Francisco, CA.
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About Larry Sherwood Jr.
Talent Acquisition Leader specializing in mobility, EV, and frontier tech. 1,000+ hires across roles ranging from production technicians to VPs, including 48 hires for the AFEELA U.S. launch at Sony Honda Mobility (98% offer acceptance, $1.5M+ agency savings). SHRM-CP certified. Build recruiting functions from scratch, no agencies.
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