Manager, Maintenance Operations

We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.

Zipline's maintenance operations keep aircraft ready to deliver reliable service. As Manager, Maintenance Operations, you will turn regional priorities into disciplined execution across Texas sites, improving fleet readiness, maintenance throughput, safety, quality, and consistency.

Reporting to the Regional Director of Maintenance Operations, you will lead through field presence, operating rigor, and influence. You will own day-to-day execution priorities and recovery plans for assigned operations, while escalating regional resource, standard, and cross-functional tradeoffs to the appropriate leaders.

- Run daily and weekly operating cadences for metrics, backlog reviews, risk escalation, recovery plans, and action follow-up across assigned Texas maintenance operations. - Prioritize site-level maintenance work using uptime, turnaround time, technician efficiency, backlog aging, repeat defects, and preventive-maintenance completion data. - Provide dotted-line leadership to Maintenance Leads, Associate Leads, and site maintenance teams to align priorities, execution quality, and accountability. - Remove blockers involving parts, tooling, staffing, documentation, training, and technical issues by coordinating Flight Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Safety, Quality, Training, and Business Operations. - Lead improvement initiatives from problem diagnosis through implementation, validating that changes improve maintenance flow, repair quality, or operational readiness. - Maintain safety, procedural adherence, record accuracy, quality, and audit readiness while ensuring maintenance standards are understood and consistently followed. - Support launch readiness, site expansions, fleet upgrades, retrofits, and other regional maintenance programs as needed.

- 7+ years of experience in service operations, fleet operations, technical operations, aerospace, robotics, manufacturing maintenance, or another high-reliability hardware environment. - Experience providing operational leadership in a fast-paced maintenance or technical environment. - Working knowledge of work-order flow, inspections, preventive and corrective maintenance, return-to-service processes, tooling, parts readiness, and documentation discipline. - Demonstrated ability to manage KPIs, diagnose performance gaps, and drive measurable improvements in uptime, throughput, repair turnaround, or backlog health. - Ability to turn field observations and data into clear priorities, structured problem solving, and durable operational actions. - Ability to influence cross-functional partners and site teams without direct reporting authority, communicate priorities clearly, and escalate risks early. - Ability to apply leadership skills to drive high accountability and ownership while developing junior leaders. - Willingness to travel across the assigned Texas territory and periodically support other regional operations as business needs require.

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!