Head of Public Affairs

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

As Zipline’s Head of Public Affairs, you will build and lead a new function that is critical to our ability to launch, scale, build and maintainearn lasting trust in the communities we serve. You will mature our community acceptance and engagement capability into a powerful business driver that anticipates challenges, builds durable relationships, cultivates advocates, defends against headwinds, and advances Zipline’s growth goals.

Reporting to Zipline’s Chief Legal Officer, you will be accountable for building community love and excitement by evangelizing Zipline’s value and benefits, accelerating market entry and growth, reducing community friction, and preparing the company to prevail in high-stakes public debates. You will work across local communities, customersusers and merchants, first responders, civic leaders, influential organizations, key stakeholders and aligned interest groups—while partnering closely with Government Affairs, Communications, Commercial teams in market, and other community-facing functions.

The work

Your key responsibilities will be to

This role is based in our South San Francisco office and includes travel to Zipline markets and communities across the U.S. and, as needed, internationally.

• Build and lead Zipline’s Public Affairs function, including the strategy, operating model, team, tools, budget, and scalable playbooks needed to support rapid growth.
• Map the stakeholder landscape in every priority market, identify the people and organizations that shape public opinion and political outcomes, and develop plans to build trust, address concerns, and cultivate champions.
• Create enduring relationships with community members, customersusers and merchants, first responders, civic and business leaders, schools, healthcare organizations, faith-based groups, workforce organizations, and other influential institutions and voices..
• Build strategic grassroots, grasstops, and third-party advocacy networks, and activate merchant and user champions, to demonstrate Zipline’s community value, support market launches, and mobilize when the company faces opposition or controversy.
• Create scalable systems to receive, respond to, analyze, and learn from community concerns and turn those insights into operational, product, and messaging improvements.
• Partner closely with Government Affairs and Communications to win government and public support.
• Collaborate with Marketing, Commercial teams, Customer Experience, Operations, Systems Engineering, Product, and Legal to align strategy, evidence, messaging, and execution.

The work

What You'll Do

• Design and execute a comprehensive Public Affairs strategy that enables Zipline to enter new markets, scale responsibly, and maintain a durable license to operate.
• Build and mature the function, including hiring and developing a high-performing team and establishing clear goals, metrics, processes, budgets, and decision rights.
• Develop detailed stakeholder maps for priority markets and maintain a disciplined relationship-management program for the most influential local voices, advocates, potential opponents, and partner organizations.
• Build strong relationships and trust with key community members through sustained neighborhood outreach, community events, homeowner association engagement, advisory groups, town halls, site visits, and other locally appropriate programs.
• Develop and maintain networks of credible advocates, including users and merchants, first responders, business and civic leaders, former public officials, academics, faith leaders, healthcare organizations, environmental and road-safety groups, workforce organizations, and other aligned third parties.
• Create programs that turn positive customeruser, merchant, partner, and community experiences into testimonials, endorsements, data, and stories that demonstrate Zipline’s value and support public advocacy.
• Build a scalable community issue-management system that enables prompt, thoughtful responses to complaints; tracks issues by market and category; detects patterns; supports issue resolution; measures resolution; and identifies opportunities to reduce future concerns.
• Prepare and execute public campaigns and rapid-response efforts when needed, including mobilizing supporters as neededfor hearings, public comments, letters of support, petitions, community endorsements, coalition statements, and other lawful advocacy activities.
• Partner closely with Government Affairs to support public-policy, zoning, land-use, and permitting objectives. Government Affairs will own relationships with elected officials, government bodies, and public agencies; Public Affairs will build the community and third-party support needed to advance shared goals.
• Serve as a key internal voice for community acceptance, ensuring that feedback about safety, privacy, acoustics, environmental impacts, and other concerns informs product priorities, operational decisions, launch sequencing, market-growth plans, and—where useful—tools that make it easier for users to provide feedback or advocate for the service.
• Work with Systems Engineering, Safety, Product, Hardware, Autonomy, and other technical teams to develop accurate, accessible evidence and capabilities needed for public engagement, including safety, acoustics, privacy, environmental, and operational data.
• Develop research, surveys, third-party validation, and other credible evidence that strengthens Zipline’s public positions and enables the company to communicate truthfully and persuasively.
• Partner with Communications and Marketing to create consistent messaging, public-facing collateral, community education, proactive storytelling, events, and crisis-response narratives across the issues most important to acceptance of Zipline’s service.
• Establish and report clear measures of success, including stakeholder coverage and relationship strength, advocate development, issue-response performance, support for permitting and launches, community sentiment, and the avoidance or successful resolution of public opposition.

Also

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of experience in public affairs, community engagement, grassroots advocacy, coalition building, campaigns, or a closely related field, including significant leadership responsibility.…