Head of Service Delivery, Africa

About the role

Zipline, the world's largest drone delivery service, is expanding its network of distribution sites across Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire. As Head of Service Delivery, Africa, you ensure every site is ready to operate from the day it is handed over and keeps performing afterwards. You set one written operating standard, train people to it, certify every site against it and hold teams accountable to clear metrics, at a sustainable cost per delivery. You report to the Head of Operations, Africa and work alongside the Heads of Deployments and Logistics.

Key responsibilities

• Write and own the operating standards library for the African network, consolidating current practices into one clear standard.
• Certify every site at go-live and every quarter after, and publish the results.
• Lead a Country Operations and Product Lead in each major market, who reports to you and works with the Country Director.
• Define the competency standard for Site Leads and Shift Team Leads and build a pipeline of around 20 new certified Site Leads for the launch programme.
• Publish a capacity envelope for each site based on flight operations constraints and real site data.
• Define the operating metrics for each site, agree targets with Country Directors and hold teams accountable.
• Own the network's operating data, including monthly site reporting and cross-site comparisons, and follow up until gaps close.
• Act as Engineering's primary operations partner: first response on field issues, standardisation and a ranked list of product requests from the field.
• Support Country Directors with standards, data and coaching to raise performance.

Required profile

• 12+ years running distributed physical operations to a written standard, such as airline ground operations, multi-site logistics, industrial or franchise operations, or healthcare networks.
• Experience building a standards and certification system from scratch, not inheriting one.
• Experience leading through country or regional leads with dotted-line authority and a reputation as a cross-functional partner.
• Track record of building operator talent pipelines at scale.

Required skills

• Strong data instincts: setting clear metrics, using operating data to spot variance and holding teams accountable.
• Strong programme and project management instincts: driving workstreams end to end across teams you do not directly lead.