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Salary: USD 107,000 - 134,000 / annual
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 is redefining global logistics and healthcare access.
The Mobile Test Site Project Manager owns the strategy, organization, readiness, and deployment of Zipline's mobile test sites. These sites provide Flight Test teams access to environmental and operational conditions—unique weather, terrain, and edge-case scenarios—that cannot be consistently reproduced at permanent facilities.
Key responsibilities include:
**Program Strategy & Planning:** Develop and maintain the mobile test site roadmap. Partner with engineering teams to forecast testing demand and identify when and where deployments are needed. Translate demand into executable plans covering locations, schedules, equipment, staffing, maintenance, and readiness.
**Site Development & Deployment:** Lead mobile sites from concept through deployment, operation, and demobilization. Own location evaluation, site layouts, infrastructure requirements, logistics, vendor coordination, deployment schedules, and readiness reviews. Establish scalable, adaptable site designs and deployment standards.
**Operations, Maintenance & Asset Allocation:** Own availability, condition, configuration, and allocation of each mobile installation. Maintain visibility of asset locations, availability windows, maintenance requirements, and deployment readiness. Partner with maintenance teams to create and sustain preventive and corrective maintenance programs.
**Standardization, Safety & Compliance:** Create and improve standard operating procedures for setup, operation, inspection, security, maintenance, and closeout. Own the safety and security framework, including risk assessments, emergency planning, access controls, and site-specific requirements. Conduct regular audits to verify standards compliance and drive corrective actions.
**Cross-Functional Execution:** Serve as central program owner connecting Flight Test Engineering, Flight Test Operations, and maintenance teams. Communicate plans, risks, dependencies, and changes clearly to stakeholders and leadership.
The ideal candidate is a highly organized, field-oriented project leader comfortable coordinating across engineering, operations, maintenance, safety, security, and external partners while managing multiple deployments in different locations. Success means Zipline can deploy the right mobile test capability to the right environment at the right time, with safe, secure, well-maintained, and consistently operated sites.
**Requirements:**
- Significant project or program management experience in complex field operations, test operations, aviation, robotics, construction, logistics, or similarly technical environment
- Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous operational needs from initial concept through planning, deployment, execution, and closeout
- Experience developing standardized procedures, readiness criteria, audit processes, and continuous-improvement systems
- Strong working knowledge of operational safety, risk management, site security, equipment maintenance, and vendor coordination
- Excellent cross-functional leadership and communication skills; ability to influence teams without direct reporting authority
- Willingness and ability to travel regularly to prospective and active mobile test locations, including remote or challenging environments
**Preferred Qualifications:**
- Experience supporting flight test, aviation, autonomous systems, drones, aerospace, or other safety-critical operations
- Experience developing temporary or mobile operating sites and coordinating infrastructure, permitting, utilities, communications, or site logistics
- Familiarity with demand forecasting, asset management, preventive maintenance programs, and operational performance metrics
- Project management certification or equivalent demonstrated experience leading complex, multi-site programs
