Commercial Implementation Manager
About the role
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
Zipline is building a new logistics system, and bringing that system into the real world requires more than great technology. Every new partner, product, and operating model needs to be translated into a solution that works reliably for the people and businesses using it every day.
The Implementation Manager will own cross-functional programs that turn commercial requirements, new products, and operational learnings into scalable, repeatable partner experiences. You’ll work across the partner lifecycle—from preparing partners for launch and introducing new capabilities to improving how we manage performance, communicate with partners, and continuously improve live operations.
A major initial focus of this role will be building two closely connected capabilities: how we understand and improve partner operational performance, and how we communicate with partners about their operations and Zipline's products. You’ll help make commercial operations more predictable, detect performance issues earlier, create clearer signals from the field, and ensure recurring learnings become better products, processes, training, communications, and partner systems.
This is a hands-on program management role. You’ll move between dashboards and order-level investigations, partner and field feedback, implementation planning, cross-functional working sessions, and partner-facing communications. You won't just identify problems—you'll build the operating mechanisms that clarify why they're happening, who owns the next step, and whether the solution actually worked.
What You'll Do
- Lead commercial implementation programs. Own complex, cross-functional initiatives that translate commercial or product requirements into successful partner operations, from planning and readiness through rollout, stabilization, and continuous improvement.
- Build scalable implementation models. Define the processes, milestones, ownership, dependencies, tools, and success criteria required to turn new solutions into repeatable operating models.
- Build Zipline's partner communications program. Develop a strategy for what partners need to know, when they need to know it, who should communicate it, and through which channels—from product and process changes to performance, operational incidents, and day-to-day updates.
- Create partner performance operating rhythms. Build and own mechanisms for reviewing partner and site health, surfacing meaningful performance trends, tracking issues, and following through on actions.
- Understand what's happening in live operations. Use dashboards, order-level investigations, field input, partner feedback, and customer support signals to identify emerging problems and distinguish isolated incidents from systemic issues.
- Drive root-cause clarity and action. Bring the right teams together to understand why recurring issues are happening, establish ownership, manage actions and risks, and verify that fixes actually improve performance.
- Turn operational learnings into durable improvements. Maintain and prioritize a continuous improvement backlog based on customer impact, partner impact, frequency, severity, and operational cost—and turn recurring issues into product improvements, playbooks, training, processes, tooling, or partner coaching.
- Launch new products and capabilities with partners. Partner with Product and other teams to translate new features, tools, and operational processes into implementation plans covering readiness, communications, training, adoption, and post-launch follow-up.
- Develop implementation playbooks and tools. Create templates, checklists, workflows, documentation, communications, and other resources that make execution more consistent as Zipline adds partners, products, and markets.
- Be the connective tissue across teams. Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Analytics, Field Operations, Partner Support, Partnerships, and other Commercial teams to translate field signals and commercial requirements into clear priorities and execution.
- Close the loop. Measure outcomes after implementation, understand gaps between the intended and actual partner experience, and feed those learnings into future implementations.
What You'll Bring
- Strong operational judgment and an ability to make sense of messy, ambiguous problems.
- A track record of owning cross-functional programs from problem discovery through implementation and measurable improvement.
- Strong project and program management fundamentals, including requirements gathering, project planning, dependency and risk management, action follow-up, stakeholder alignment, and executive communication.
- Comfort working with data, dashboards, and detailed operational investigations, paired with the judgment to distinguish anecdotes from systemic issues.
- Excellent communication skills and an ability to translate complex product, technical, or operational information into clear working-team plans, leadership updates, and partner-facing narratives.
- The ability to create clarity and accountability across teams you don't directly manage.
- A hands-on operating style: you're willing to dive deeply into the details, but your goal is to turn what you learn into repeatable systems that scale.
- Comfort moving between strategy and execution—you can define what a program should become and then build the mechanisms required to make it real.
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in implementation, program management, partner operations, launch operations, process improvement, product operations, logistics, or a similarly cross-functional role.
- Experience leading complex implementations or operational programs in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
- Experience building new processes or programs rather than solely operating established ones.
- Experience working across Product, Engineering, Analytics, Field Operations, Customer Support, Partnerships, or Commercial teams.
- Experience working with external partners in retail, restaurants, marketplaces, logistics, or another operationally complex environment is a plus.
Success Looks Like
Within your first six months, you have developed a strong understanding of Zipline's commercial partner lifecycle and taken ownership of meaningful implementation and partner-operations programs. You've established clear operating rhythms for understanding partner performance, identified the highest-impact opportunities for improvement, and built the first version of a scalable partner communications program.
You've created clearer mechanisms for turning performance issues into action: root causes are better understood, owners are clearer, risks and actions are tracked, and teams can determine whether fixes actually worked.
Most importantly, you're beginning to turn repeated work into systems. Issues that previously surfaced as individual escalations are increasingly becoming playbooks, training updates, product improvements, communication programs, dashboard changes, or partner coaching. New implementations benefit from what we've learned from previous ones.
Over time, Zipline's commercial implementations become more predictable, measurable, repeatable, and easier to scale—while Product and Engineering receive stronger signals from the field and our partners have a clearer understanding of what's working, what's changing, and what they need to do to be successful.
What Else You Need To Know
The starting cash range for this role is $140,000 - 180,000. 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, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.
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!
Voluntary Self-Identification
For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.
As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.