Demo

Technical Program Manager - Autonomy

Zipline
South San Francisco, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 11/28/2025
AVAILABLE BEFORE 2/25/2026
About Zipline

Do you want to change the world? Zipline is on a mission to transform the way goods move. Our aim is to solve the world’s most urgent and complex access challenges by building, manufacturing and operating the first instant delivery and logistics system that serves all humans equally, wherever they are. From powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution, to providing on-demand home delivery for Walmart, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes, we are transforming the way things move for businesses, governments and consumers. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it.

Through our technology that includes robotics and autonomy, we are decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion, and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access to billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

Join Zipline and help us to make good on our promise to build an equitable and more resilient global supply chain for billions of people.

About You And The Role

You will be responsible for managing the roadmap and execution of Zipline’s Autonomy teams, leading the company to ship more impactful autonomy software, faster. This includes everything from the software that detects and avoids aircraft with acoustic sensors to the software that controls the delivery path. You’ll work closely with software engineers, team leads and other TPMs across the company. You’ll also work with flight test operations, our hardware programs, and regulatory teams as we push the bleeding edge forward. You’ll speed up development by ensuring all pieces of our complex system are coming together on time and achieving our quality bar.

What You'll Do

  • Manage the Autonomy software roadmap: balance, drive, and align key features while surfacing gaps and mitigating risks to projects and the overall program
  • Measure and improve development velocity: own engineering timelines, unblock teams, cross-check plans, and streamline cross-functional dependencies
  • Engage across the development lifecycle: from architecture reviews, to sprint planning, and all the way to system validation
  • Engage across the breadth of the technical stack: from camera and acoustic perception systems, to data pipelines and path planning.
  • Translate and integrate broader company goals into specific autonomy system strategy
  • Bring the right people together to make critical decisions
  • Communicate progress across Autonomy program to the executive team and broader company


What You'll Bring

  • 8 years of experience managing software programs
  • An understanding of a modern software development life cycles
  • Ability to quickly build useful understanding of many technical domains
  • Experience managing and tracking complicated development programs across software and hardware
  • Experience coordinating projects across a medium- or large-sized engineering team shipping safety critical software
  • Efficient at leading conversations to clear next-steps and decisions with many competing priorities
  • Experience standing up and rolling out new development and processes for engineering teams
  • Familiarity with autonomous robotics systems, safety critical software, and flight systems, data and machine learning model lifecycles


What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $165,000 - $210,000. 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, 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!

Salary : $165,000 - $210,000

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