Head of Weather Systems

Job description

Job responsibilities

• Own end-to-end development and operational performance of the automated weather intelligence and risk system used for mission go/no-go decisions across Zipline’s operational regions.
• Translate meteorological uncertainty into concrete, testable operational limits and encode those into automated decision logic used in daily operations.
• Define and measure success: set quantitative targets (e.g., uptime improvement, false downtime rate, missed-risk rate, delivery throughput impact) and deliver within the first 12 months measurable improvements compared…
• Lead validation efforts using a combination of simulation, historical log replay, flight test, and live operations; design experiments and acceptance criteria for new models, sensors, and rules before production rollout.
• Prioritize trade-offs across safety margin, operational availability, sensing cost, model complexity, and deployment speed; document failure modes and rollback criteria for all changes.
• Own cross-functional execution with Flight Operations, Safety, Flight Sciences, Simulation, Field Sites, and Engineering: define SLAs, incident roles, and escalation paths for weather-driven incidents.
• Drive the roadmap for sensing (ground and air), data ingestion, model tooling, and runtime decision services; sponsor necessary infrastructure (streaming, simulation, monitoring) to help meet operational SLAs.
• Hire, mentor, and manage a small technical team (3–5 engineers/scientists) or partner with an existing engineering manager while retaining product and technical ownership of the weather system.