Executive Assistant, Chief Hardware Officer & Head of Autonomy

Skills this role screens for

About the role

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 looking for an exceptional Executive Assistant to support Jo Mardall, our Chief Hardware Officer, and CJ Moore, our Head of Autonomy. Together, Jo and CJ lead some of the most technically complex and operationally critical work at Zipline: aircraft reliability, hardware execution, flight software, autonomy, release readiness, fleet health, and the systems that allow Zipline to scale safely.

This is not a traditional administrative support role. You will sit close to the technical operating heartbeat of the company, helping two senior leaders stay focused, prepared, and effective across a fast-moving mix of engineering reviews, fleet health forums, release decisions, incident follow-ups, recruiting, executive discussions, and cross-functional escalations.

The right person for this role is highly organized, calm under pressure, technically curious, and comfortable operating in ambiguity. You do not need to be an engineer, but you do need to be able to follow technical conversations well enough to understand what matters, who owns what, what needs to happen next, and when something needs to be escalated.

You will be trusted with sensitive company, technical, people, and operational information. You’ll need excellent judgment, strong written communication, crisp follow-through, and the confidence to work across senior executives, engineers, program managers, operations leaders, recruiting, People Partners, and field teams.

This role is based at our South San Francisco, CA headquarters.

The work

What You'll Do

• Partner directly with Jo and CJ to manage their calendars, priorities, commitments, and operating cadence across hardware, autonomy, flight software, fleet reliability, operations, and executive forums.
• Own complex calendar management with strong business judgment, ensuring their time is spent on the highest-impact decisions, escalations, reviews, and team priorities.
• Prepare leaders for technical operating meetings by gathering agendas, context, pre-reads, open decisions, owners, dates, and follow-up items across Slack, Gmail, Drive, Confluence, Jira, and internal systems.
• Help coordinate critical forums such as fleet health reviews, release and validation discussions, hardware/software syncs, architecture reviews, escalation meetings, recruiting debriefs, and executive operating cadences.
• Track follow-ups across technical workstreams, ensuring decisions, owners, deadlines, revisit dates, and open questions do not get lost after fast-moving meetings.
• Support escalation hygiene by helping route the right topics to the right leaders, forums, and timelines while maintaining clear visibility on status and next steps.
• Coordinate complex domestic and international travel, including itineraries, logistics, meeting preparation, and contingency planning.
• Support recruiting and hiring workflows for senior and technical candidates, including interview scheduling, debrief coordination, candidate follow-up, and confidential process management.
• Represent Jo, CJ, and the broader technical leadership team with professionalism, clarity, warmth, and high standards in interactions across Zipline and externally.
• Proactively identify ways to improve how information flows, meetings are prepared, decisions are captured, and follow-through happens across both leaders’ organizations.

Also

What You'll Bring

What Else You Need to Know

The starting cash range for this role is $150,000 - $200,000. Please note that this is a target starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash payment for this role will depend on various factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may include equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; 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.…

• 7+ years of experience as an Executive Assistant, ideally supporting senior technical, engineering, product, operations, hardware, software, robotics, aerospace, manufacturing, or infrastructure leaders.
• Exceptional judgment and discretion, especially when handling confidential technical, operational, recruiting, executive, or people-related information.
• Strong ability to operate in technical environments. You do not need to make technical decisions, but you should be comfortable around topics like aircraft reliability, software releases, validation, hardware root cause analysis, fleet operations, and engineering escalations.
• Excellent calendar, meeting, travel, and logistics management skills in a high-velocity environment with shifting priorities.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills. You can turn messy discussion into clear follow-up, owners, dates, and next steps.
• High ownership and follow-through. You notice dropped balls, close loops, and keep important work moving without needing constant direction.
• Strong prioritization instincts and the ability to protect executive focus while staying responsive to urgent operational needs.
• Comfort working across executives, senior engineers, program managers, recruiters, People Partners, operations leaders, and field teams.
• Strong attention to detail and a high bar for preparation, accuracy, and reliability.
• A service-oriented mindset with backbone. You are helpful, thoughtful, and proactive, while also comfortable pushing for clarity, protecting priorities, and escalating when needed.
• Energy, resilience, and enthusiasm for supporting leaders whose work directly affects the safety, reliability, and scale of Zipline’s global operations.