Warehouse Operations Excellence Lead, Africa

Remote in 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

At Zipline, getting a medical product to a patient safely and on time depends on far more than the flight itself. Every product must be received correctly, stored at the right temperature, accounted for precisely, and fulfilled quickly and accurately. Better warehousing means higher-quality service, greater customer trust, and faster delivery—because every minute we remove from picking and packing is a minute sooner that customers can receive the products they need.

As the Warehouse Operations Excellence Lead, you will own the network-wide operating model for medical storage and order fulfillment across Zipline’s African network, which spans ~13 distribution centers today and is expected to grow to 30+ in the next few years. Your work ensures inventory accuracy, cold-chain integrity, auditable controls, and fast, reliable fulfillment so clinicians get the right product, at the right temperature, on time. This role bridges strategy and hands-on execution: you will design standards and systems centrally and spend significant time in the field coaching site teams, fixing root causes, and validating operational readiness. You will partner closely with Operations, Pharmacy, Regulatory, Product, and Engineering to make warehousing a predictable, scalable part of Zipline’s end-to-end delivery system.

What You'll Do

• Own the operating model and site standards for medical warehousing and fulfillment across a multi-country network: SOPs, quality gates, layouts, storage & cold-chain controls, tooling, and maturity expectations to support growth from ~13 to 30+ sites.
• Set and own network-level performance targets (inventory accuracy, order fill rate, cold-chain compliance, picking/packing cycle time, on-time dispatch) and drive measurable improvement against those metrics.
• Conduct regular field audits, cycle counts, and workflow observations; lead root-cause analysis and verification of corrective actions until issues are closed.
• Design repeatable launch and upgrade packages (site layouts, racking, temperature-control design, WMS configurations, SOPs, training) so sites can be deployed and improved consistently and rapidly.
• Translate clinical, regulatory, and product constraints into auditable, operator-executable controls; lead readiness for regulatory and customer audits and own corrective action closure.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to define WMS, mobile tools, and automation requirements that remove operator burden and materially improve throughput and traceability; prioritize fixes by operational impact.
• Build and run performance-management systems: KPIs, dashboards, operating reviews, escalation paths, and continuous-improvement routines that make problems visible and actionable.
• Coach and upskill site leaders and frontline teams to establish local ownership of quality and reliability; serve as the senior escalation owner for warehousing incidents that threaten fulfillment reliability, compliance, or patient safety.

What You'll Bring

• 6+ years leading multi-site warehouse, fulfillment, or distribution operations; experience in pharmaceuticals, healthcare, medical devices, or regulated supply chains required.
• Proven track record scaling standardized operating models across multiple sites or countries with measurable gains in inventory accuracy, fill rate, throughput, or cold-chain compliance.
• Deep, practical knowledge of inventory control, cycle counting, reconciliation, WMS configuration and integrations, traceability, and cold-chain handling; a pharmaceutical license is a significant plus.
• Experience specifying or implementing WMS/technology and the judgment to choose operational fixes vs. technical fixes.
• Direct experience working with pharmacy, quality, or regulatory partners to convert compliance requirements into frontline-executable controls and audit-ready documentation.
• Demonstrated continuous-improvement capability (root-cause analysis, Lean/Six Sigma tools) with examples of delivered operational impact.
• Clear evidence of ownership: led cross-functional rollouts, resolved major operational failures, or owned network-level performance outcomes.
• High attention to detail, systems thinking, and the willingness to work in active operational environments to validate solutions.
• Ability and willingness to spend up to 50% of time in the field, including extended visits across multiple African countries; comfortable working across time zones and cultures.

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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