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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 makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds.
We are seeking an exceptional Test Maintenance Engineering Lead to build and oversee a multi-state organization of maintenance technicians. This is a Director-level role requiring both strong people management and hands-on technical leadership.
You will design the correct managerial hierarchy for a distributed workforce while remaining willing and capable of performing any task you ask of your technicians. You will define crystal-clear expectations, drive accountability at every level, and foster a culture of extreme accountability and rigorous standards representative of aircraft maintenance.
Key responsibilities include:
- Building and scaling a world-class maintenance engineering organization across multiple states and sites
- Leading from the front as a hands-on technical leader with deep technical competence
- Driving aviation-grade standards for safety, precision, and quality without sacrificing speed and agility
- Proactively catching, escalating, and resolving technical and systematic challenges before they reach commercial operations
- Collaborating seamlessly across Engineering, Quality, Operations, and Commercial teams
- Fostering a humble, ego-free team culture centered on continuous improvement and support
You will be the linchpin between hardware testing environments and commercial operations, ensuring no process or quality gaps make it to the commercial organization. Your ultimate mission is to safeguard commercial success by preventing issues from reaching downstream teams.
Required qualifications: 10-15+ years of progressive technical experience in aviation maintenance, test engineering, hardware operations, or aerospace manufacturing; 5-8+ years of direct people management experience with a proven track record of designing organizational structures and scaling distributed teams across multiple states and sites.
