Maintenance Operations Engineering Lead

About You and the Role

As an Associate Maintenance Operations Engineering Lead at Zipline’s Flight Test sites, you will help lead maintenance execution across a highly dynamic and technically complex test environment. This role goes beyond day-to-day aircraft maintenance oversight and requires strong judgment, systems thinking, and technical depth to support evolving hardware, off-nominal work, and experimental fleet operations.

You will be responsible for helping drive maintenance readiness, asset availability, hardware modification execution, and continuous process improvement across multiple test fleets with different purposes and configurations. You will partner closely with flight test operators, maintenance leadership, and engineering teams to support maintenance pilots, manage configuration-specific asks, and ensure maintenance operations can scale with the pace of flight test.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who is equally comfortable solving technical problems, improving maintenance systems, and supporting frontline execution.

What You’ll Do

• Support day-to-day maintenance execution across Flight Test sites, helping prioritize work, allocate resources, and resolve operational blockers
• Lead and coordinate complex off-nominal maintenance work, including creating and improving work templates to properly capture, track, and close emerging maintenance tasks
• Help own and action the hardware modification process, including planning, coordination, execution support, documentation, and follow-through across affected aircraft and assets
• Assist with running maintenance pilots and trial workflows, then provide structured feedback to engineering and cross-functional teams to improve maintainability, tooling, documentation, and processes
• Coordinate fleet configuration changes and hardware-specific asks across aircraft with different test purposes, maturity levels, and operational requirements
• Support major asset management across multiple fleets, ensuring parts, tools, aircraft, and support equipment are aligned to operational and test priorities
• Manage return-to-service pipelines, inspection status, backlog, and maintenance readiness for active test aircraft
• Ensure accurate maintenance records, modification documentation, and configuration tracking
• Reinforce high standards for shop floor execution, SOP adherence, safety, and maintenance quality
• Provide technical guidance and day-to-day direction to maintenance technicians as needed
• Support technician onboarding, training, and development in partnership with our Zipline Academy training team' 
• Identify gaps in maintenance processes, documentation, and coordination, then help build more scalable systems to support the growing complexity of test operations

What You’ll Bring

• 3+ years of experience in aviation maintenance, aircraft operations, fleet management, or another highly technical hardware operations environment
• Strong hands-on maintenance and troubleshooting skills, with the ability to operate effectively in a fast-changing test environment
• Demonstrated ability to manage technically complex work beyond routine maintenance execution
• Experience exercising sound judgment in ambiguous situations involving aircraft readiness, hardware changes, or off-nominal maintenance events
• Familiarity with maintenance documentation, configuration control, return-to-service workflows, and operational compliance
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to track multiple priorities across aircraft, assets, and competing site needs
• Ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, operations, and maintenance teams and provide clear feedback that improves hardware and maintenance processes
• Experience mentoring technicians or informally leading work on the shop floor
• Flexibility to support changing priorities, shift-based operations, and a scaling flight test organization

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience supporting flight test, R&D, prototype, or non-standard fleet operations
• Experience with aircraft modification programs, conformity, or configuration management
• Experience designing or improving maintenance workflows, task templates, or documentation systems
• Experience managing mixed fleets or assets with different mission profiles and maintenance needs
• FAA A&P or equivalent technical certification preferred, but not required

What Else You Need to Know 

The starting cash range for this role is $97,000 - $146,000. 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, 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!