Head of Service Delivery, Africa

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 operates a growing network of distribution sites across Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, and that network is about to expand quickly. As Head of Service Delivery, Africa, you will make sure every site is ready to operate from the day it is handed over and keeps performing after that. You will set one written operating standard, train people to it, certify every site against it and hold teams accountable to clear metrics, at a sustainable cost per delivery.
 
Country Directors run their sites day to day. You will own how the work is done, and partner with them to bring every site up to the same standard. You will lead our in-country operations excellence and compliance teams, set the bar for operator competence, and be Engineering’s main operations counterpart. You will report to the Head of Operations, Africa, and work alongside the Heads of Deployments and Logistics as one regional leadership team.
 
What You'll Do  

• Write and own the operating standards library for our African network, consolidating what exists today into one clear standard. Practices vary from site to site today, so much of your first year will go into writing these standards and embedding them in every site.
• Certify every site at go-live and every quarter after that, and publish the results.
• Lead a Country Operations & Product Lead in each major market, who reports to you and works hand in hand with their Country Director.
• Define the competency standard for Site Leads and Shift Team Leads and, with our People team, build the pipeline that produces around 20 new certified Site Leads for our launch programme.
• Publish a capacity envelope for each site, based on flight operations constraints and real site data.
• Define the operating metrics every site is measured on, agree targets with each Country Director, and hold site teams accountable for meeting them.
• Own the network’s operating data, including monthly site reporting and cross-site comparisons, and follow up until the gaps are closed.
• Act as Engineering’s primary operations partner: first response on field issues, standardisation, and a ranked list of product requests from the field.
• Build strong working relationships with every Country Director. They run operations in their countries, and you will support them with the standards, data and coaching to raise performance.

What Success Looks Like

• A rising share of sites certified at standard, with high certification pass rates.
• Findings closed quickly, and the same finding rarely appears twice.
• Capacity envelopes that accurately predict what each site can deliver.
• New Site Leads reach full competency quickly and are ready for each launch.
• Every site reports against the same metrics, and performance gaps between sites narrow month on month.

What You'll Bring 

• 12+ years running distributed physical operations to a written standard, for example airline ground operations, multi-site logistics networks, industrial or franchise operations, or healthcare networks.
• You have built a standards and certification system from scratch, not just inherited one.
• Experience leading through country or regional leads with dotted-line authority, and a reputation as an outstanding cross-functional partner.
• A track record of building operator talent pipelines at scale.
• Strong data instincts: you set clear metrics, use operating data to spot variance, and hold teams accountable.
• Strong programme and project management instincts: you drive workstreams end to end across teams you don't directly lead.

What Else You Need to Know   

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!   --

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