Nest Lead (Distribution Center Lead), Côte d'Ivoire

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

The Nest (Distribution Center) is the heart of Zipline’s operation. As the Nest Lead, you will be responsible for driving end-to-end execution and operational excellence in Distribution Center Operations while influencing cross-functional priorities and future growth. You’ll own operational performance, impact optimization of Zipline’s unit economics, and ensure that the nest is a model of scalable, efficient, and high-quality service delivery across the continent. You will be responsible for driving service utilization and supply integration that grows demand for your business unit.

This is a high-impact role for a strong people leader and systems thinker who thrives in complex environments and is passionate about building teams, processes, and infrastructure for long-term success.

Locations

Cote d’Ivoire - various upcountry locations

Contract Type

1 year fixed term contract.

What You'll Do

1. Team Leadership & Development:

• Be the single point of accountability for cross-functional collaboration within your operations team.

• Lead, coach, inspire and drive a performance culture across a diverse team of facilities, fulfillment, flight and call center operations (where applicable), through clear goal setting and real-time feedback.

• Nurture leaders across the nest through structured training, coaching, and performance management.

• Support recruitment, onboarding, and training of new team members to maintain a high-performance, cross-functional team.

• Oversee shift planning, staff scheduling, and resource allocation to ensure adequate coverage across all functional areas.

• Proactively design and support strategies to retain high performers (recognition programs, growth plans)

2. Nest Operational Strategy & Execution:

• Translate national strategy into a roadmap for nest operations, aligned with company goals around customer success, reliability, cost and scale.

• Lead multi-function operations in fulfillment, facilities, flight and call center (where applicable) operations, ensuring alignment with global best practices, quality standards, safety requirements and customer feedback.

• Forecast operational needs and build capacity (demand, people, systems, infrastructure, inventory) to meet demand growth and evolving customer requirements.

• Risk identification & contingency planning: Develop risk matrices for nest operations and implement mitigation strategies.

3. Operational Performance & Optimization:

• Monitor operational KPIs in real time, responding swiftly to deviations and bottlenecks.

• Own and continuously improve key nest metrics: leverage data to identify performance trends, surface inefficiencies, and implement corrective and preventative actions.

• Drive operational rigor and compliance through SOP adherence, standard work, and process control while adapting systems to local realities.

• Pilot and implement new systems, tools, or workflows that drive scalability at nests.

• Maintain high operational availability of the physical site and equipment by overseeing basic facilities management, including cleanliness, power systems, water supply, workspaces, and safety infrastructure.

• Implement strategies to optimize space utilization, reduce waste, and improve storage efficiency.

• Continuous improvement culture: Empower frontline teams to birth innovative ideas and improvement across nest systems, processes targeted towards customer satisfaction

4. Financial ownership - COGs and OPEX:

• Take ownership of nest-level Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and Operating Expenses (OPEX).

• Make informed, data-backed decisions around spending in collaboration with procurement, facilities, and inventory management teams.

• Identify cost-saving opportunities across processes, procurement, utilities, and logistics while protecting operational performance.

• Lead cost control initiatives to contribute to a sustainable, healthy nest P&L and global efficiency efforts.

5. Cross-functional Partnership & Change Leadership:

• Collaborate closely with Customer Experience, Engineering, Product, Safety, and Quality teams to enable end-to-end operational efficiency.