SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
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 flown over 140 million commercial autonomous miles and serves healthcare systems, governments, retailers, and global businesses.
As Head of Africa Operations / Africa COO, you will lead Zipline's African network as it scales approximately threefold over the next 24 months. You will oversee operations across Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, and additional African markets, reporting directly to the CEO of Africa.
Key responsibilities include:
- Define and lead operating strategy for Zipline Africa across existing and new markets
- Build organizational structure, leadership bench, and operating mechanisms to support growth
- Own end-to-end readiness and launch of new countries, operating sites, and distribution centers, integrating infrastructure, regulatory, commercial, technology, people, logistics, quality, legal, and operations
- Establish consistently high standards for service delivery, customer experience, quality, safety, and operational performance
- Build Africa logistics and warehousing model supporting rapid growth, including import/export, customs, freight, 3PLs, inventory movement, and last-mile logistics
- Create culture of operational excellence driving standardization, disciplined execution, root-cause problem solving, and continuous improvement
- Lead focus on improving unit economics, including cost per delivery and operating site efficiency
- Provide functional leadership to Country Operations through dotted-line relationships
- Represent Africa Operations as senior leader, strengthening relationships with regulators, partners, vendors, and external stakeholders
First-year success metrics include launching multiple new sites while improving deployment speed and cost, improving service reliability and customer experience, establishing scalable operating model for warehousing and inventory, building leadership capacity and organizational structure, and delivering measurable improvements in launch cost, cost per delivery, NPS, quality, and warehouse performance.
You will lead a few dozen employees directly with broader organization many times that size through dotted-line relationships. This is a rare opportunity to shape Zipline's next phase of growth and the future of healthcare logistics across an entire continent.
Requirements:
- Significant executive-level experience scaling technology-enabled operations across multiple markets
- Track record of building and leading organizations through rapid growth, market expansion, and operational complexity
- Experience in logistics, last-mile delivery, or technology-enabled service business with substantial operational and integration requirements
- Demonstrated ability to translate strategy into operating model, build strong leaders, and create systems delivering consistent performance at scale
- Experience in regulated, infrastructure-intensive, or technically complex environments; experience in Africa and/or emerging markets highly preferred
- Strong commercial and operational judgment to improve customer outcomes and unit economics simultaneously
- Exceptional cross-functional leadership and ability to influence country, global, technical, commercial, and external stakeholders
- Based in Africa or willing to relocate, with ability to travel approximately 30%
- Leadership profile: builder of institutions, creator of clarity and accountability in ambiguous environments, developer of leaders; combines strategic perspective with strong operating instincts; ambitious for mission, demanding about standards, committed to building capable and resilient teams
