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Zipline is the world's largest autonomous drone delivery service, operating on four continents and completing millions of deliveries of blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. The company has safely flown over 140 million commercial autonomous miles and is redefining logistics and healthcare access globally.
As Flight Test Site Lead, you will run day-to-day operations of Zipline's flight test facility in Amarillo, Texas, overseeing the transition of new aircraft capabilities from engineering development into safe, repeatable flight test operations. You will lead Flight Test Operators, Ground Test personnel, and Visual Observer teams while managing site readiness, execution, staffing, safety, and overall team performance.
Key responsibilities include setting daily site priorities, leading operational briefings and readiness checks, and directing safe execution of flight and ground test activities. You will make site-level readiness, staffing allocation, and stop-work decisions; escalate test-plan changes and unresolved safety, engineering, or program tradeoffs to appropriate stakeholders. You will manage and develop your teams through hiring, onboarding, coaching, feedback, and performance management.
You will coordinate facilities, equipment, layout, and operational needs with internal partners and vendors; partner with engineering, safety, maintenance, and manufacturing to plan and execute complex test campaigns. You will track safety, readiness, throughput, repeatability, and reliability metrics to continuously improve procedures, tooling, workflows, and resource allocation. You will also represent Flight Test Operations during facility visits, explaining Zipline's aircraft, test approach, and operating practices to technical and non-technical audiences.
Success is defined as a safe, ready site that executes planned test work with improving throughput, repeatability, and reliability, with safety governing all tradeoffs.
