Senior Manager / Director - Ground Systems Construction

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 this role Zipline is looking for a Sr Manager / Director of Construction to build, grow, and lead the construction function for Ground Systems Deployments. This person will be accountable for how Zipline builds charging sites and related ground infrastructure across many projects, metros, and future markets. This is both a tactical execution and strategic planning role. You will hire, mentor, monitor, and manage construction managers who own schedule, cost, quality, safety, contractor coordination, and field execution across a broad portfolio of projects. You may also help define and eventually own an internal self-perform capability, including general contracting and trade resources where it makes sense for Zipline to build directly. The right leader will define the construction strategy for Zipline: when to use national or regional general contractors, when to self-perform, how to build strategic contractor relationships, how to manage trade capacity, how to keep construction aligned with design and launch needs, and how to make construction a scalable operating function rather than a project-by-project scramble. What you'll do Build and lead the Ground Systems Construction function responsible for delivering Zipline charging sites and related ground infrastructure across active and future markets. Hire, mentor, manage, and raise the bar for construction managers who own site-level schedule, cost, quality, safety, contractor coordination, and field execution. Define Zipline's construction strategy, including where to use general contractors, where to use specialty trades, where to build self-perform capability, and how the model should evolve as volume increases. Own construction execution outcomes across a portfolio of projects, including schedule reliability, cost control, safety performance, quality, change management, closeout, and readiness for launch or operations. Source, evaluate, negotiate with, and manage strategic relationships with general contractors and trade partners across the country. Partner closely with Finance, Legal, Procurement, Design Execution, Design Concepts, Project Engineering, Launch, Service Operations, Real Estate, and Field Operations to keep construction aligned with business needs and risk controls. Build the systems needed to scale construction: project controls, reporting cadence, cost tracking, schedule reviews, contractor sc