Head of Deployments - 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 is entering its biggest build period in Africa yet. Over the next two years we will open more than 20 new distribution sites across Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, and launch our first Precision Delivery network in Kigali, Rwanda. As Head of Deployments, Africa, you will own every launch from signed contract to a certified, operating site, and make each one faster and more repeatable than the last. Every site should be handed over ready to run, with no open issues left for the operating team.

You will lead parallel launch teams across several countries, own the playbook every launch runs on, and build an organisation that scales up for a build wave and back down when it’s done. You will report to the Head of Operations, Africa, and work alongside the Heads of Service Delivery and Logistics as one regional leadership team.

What You'll Do  

• Lead parallel launch programmes across Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, taking each site from signed contract through land, permits, construction, power, hiring, training and commissioning to handover.
• Drive the work, not just coordinate it. Set the pace on every launch, hold owners to their dates and the quality bar, and step in early when a launch starts to slip.
• Run our first Precision Delivery launch in Kigali as a dedicated workstream, with a clear go/no-go gate and dependencies agreed with our platform and engineering teams.
• Own the deployment playbook and standard bill of materials, and productise them so each launch is faster than the last.
• Plan each country as a single programme, with one customs plan, one spares plan and one power strategy per country.
• Hand over every site through a written acceptance gate that the operating team can refuse, and own the cost of any defects in the first 90 days after handover.
• Build and lead a flexible team: a small permanent core covering programme management, operations readiness, construction, electrical and commercial, plus in-country launch pods and contract build labour. Hire and develop strong leaders, and redeploy talent well as each build wave winds down.
• Partner closely with Country Directors, governments and regulators, contractors, Supply Chain and Logistics, and Engineering to clear the path for every launch.

What Success Looks Like

• Sites go live certified and on plan, and time to launch falls with every launch.
• Sites are accepted first time, with few defects in the first 90 days.
• Every site is delivered on or under budget.
• The Kigali Precision Delivery launch clears its gates on schedule.
• Every new launch starts from the playbook.

What You'll Bring 

• 12–15+ years delivering multi-site infrastructure or network build programmes, such as telecom tower rollouts, renewable energy, logistics hubs, data centres or fulfilment networks at scale.
• Hands-on build experience in Africa, covering land, permits, customs, power, contractors and government interfaces. Experience in West Africa is especially valued.
• A track record of running parallel builds against a contractual deadline.
• Experience building a repeatable deployment playbook and applying it across many sites.
• Senior enough to set strategy and lead leaders; hands-on enough to walk a site and see what needs fixing.
• Comfort leading an organisation that grows and shrinks with the launch pipeline.
• Strong programme and project management instincts: you drive workstreams end to end across teams you don't directly lead.
• Excellent stakeholder and negotiation skills, with a track record of aligning senior commercial leaders around a plan and holding a quality bar under delivery pressure.

What Else You Need to Know   

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.