Technical Program Manager, Cloud, Data & Validation Platforms

Company: Zipline
Location: South San Francisco
Posted on: April 1, 2026

Job Description:

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 You’re a force of nature — someone who thrives on bringing order to chaos, driving clarity where there’s ambiguity, and pushing complex, cross-functional efforts across the finish line. As part of Zipline’s Program Management team, you’ll own execution for the platforms that power iteration speed and fleet scale: cloud/on-prem infrastructure, data pipelines and artifacts, CI/CD and developer productivity, simulation, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) validation. Your programs may range from onboard logging and data ingestion to large-scale load testing, build system modernization, and raising the fidelity/throughput of our validation environments. You’ll partner closely with infrastructure, data, autonomy, validation, and security teams to keep the engine of velocity running. What You’ll Do Own execution for platform programs: Define program goals, sequence priorities across cloud/on-prem, data platforms, CI/CD, sim, and HIL — and align with company objectives. Drive cross-functional execution: Coordinate with infra, data, autonomy, validation and product to deliver reliable pipelines, robust environments, and measurable reliability and performance targets. Measure and improve engineering velocity: Reduce build/test cycle times, improve data freshness and reliability, and increase simulation/HIL throughput and representativeness. Engage across the full lifecycle: From platform architecture and security reviews through rollout plans, migration/change management, and operational handoffs. Facilitate strategic decision-making: Lead tradeoff discussions on performance/cost/reliability, on-prem vs. cloud, and “build vs. buy” for tooling. Communicate program progress: Provide crisp visibility on timelines, risks, and outcomes to leadership and partner teams. Build and evolve program processes: Define metrics, run postmortems and retros, and harden roadmaps that scale with the fleet. What You’ll Bring Over 6 years of experience in technical program management (or equivalent) leading platform, data, or infrastructure initiatives serving multiple engineering teams. Experience as a Software Engineer working on the above is a strong plus. Strong understanding of modern software lifecycles, CI/CD, and developer workflow best practices. Proven ability to drive complex cross-team deliveries with clear prioritization, sequencing, and risk management. Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence outcomes across diverse technical stakeholders. Analytical, data-driven approach; comfortable defining and improving key metrics, including build times, data latency, and environment reliability and availability targets. Adaptability and resilience; experience introducing and scaling new processes and platforms. Familiarity with telemetry/log pipelines, distributed systems, cost/performance tradeoffs in mixed cloud/on-prem, simulation/HIL environments, and safety-critical software. What Else You Need to Know The starting cash range for this role is $165,000 - $210,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; overtime pay; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more. Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies. We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!

Keywords: Zipline, Walnut Creek , Technical Program Manager, Cloud, Data & Validation Platforms, Engineering , South San Francisco, California