Senior​/Manager - Ground Systems Design Execution

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.

Zipline is looking for a Sr Staff Engineer or Engineering Manager to lead the Design Execution team responsible for turning site concepts into permit-ready and construction-ready design packages for Zipline sites. This person will lead a group of design managers who own site designs from initial concept layout through issue-for-permit and issue-for-construction deliverables.

This role is for someone who has spent meaningful time managing design delivery for physical infrastructure: site layouts, civil design, structural coordination, electrical interfaces, permit drawings, consultant coordination, jurisdictional comments, utility engagement, application and coordination, construction document quality, and design changes during construction. The right candidate likely has around 10 years of relevant experience and has managed small teams of direct reports for at least three to five years.

You should bring professional grounding in architecture, civil engineering, structural engineering, or a related design discipline. Strong candidates may come from design consultancies, owner-side design management roles, EV charging, commercial solar, distributed infrastructure, retail/site rollout, industrial facilities, or other companies that put repeatable physical infrastructure into the field.

• Lead the Design Execution function responsible for delivering site-specific charging‑site designs from concept layout through issue-for-permit and issue-for-construction sets.
• Grow, manage and develop a team of design managers who coordinate internal stakeholders, external consultants, engineering disciplines, permitting requirements, and construction feedback.
• Build a predictable design delivery process with clear gates, drawing expectations, review cycles, permit-submission readiness, IFC readiness, and construction-support expectations.
• Own design execution quality across many concurrent sites, making sure drawings are complete, coordinated, buildable, permit-ready, and aligned with Zipline standards.
• Partner with Design Concepts and Standardization so execution teams have strong templates, basis-of-design documents, design guides, checklists, and repeatable details.
• Coordinate closely with Construction, Service Operations, Project Engineering, Launch, Real Estate, Legal, Finance, and external consultants to keep design packages aligned with site constraints, schedule, budget, permitting strategy, and construction reality.
• Establish mechanisms to catch design issues early, including constructability reviews, discipline coordination reviews, jurisdictional‑risk reviews, and lessons-learned loops from the field.
• Manage consultant performance, including scopes of work, deliverable quality, timelines, communication, revision control, and design accountability.
• Help define role boundaries between design managers, project engineers, consultants, construction managers, and standards engineers so execution work moves quickly without…