{"id":3463258,"url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data","title":"Manager Data Operations & Annotations, Autonomy Data","company":{"id":15878,"name":"Zipline","domain":"zipline.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/zipline","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":15,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":58,"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"}},"role":"Operations","role_family":"Operations","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Ann Arbor, United States","South San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":180000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":180000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-01T23:12:01Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-15","last_verified_at":"2026-11-01T18:33:43Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":60,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":60},"description":"About Zipline\nZipline 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. \nOur 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.\nOur 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.\nWe 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.\nAbout You and the Role\nYou will lead the team responsible for turning real-world data into high-quality, cost-effective datasets for Zipline’s machine learning and autonomy teams.\nThis role spans field operations, autonomy, ML, engineering, and data infrastructure. You will set the strategy for how data is collected, annotated, and validated, while building an operation that continuously improves its quality, coverage, speed, and economics.\nYou will also lead and develop the organization behind these systems, while partnering closely with technical teams to ensure data operations evolve with the needs of our autonomy stack.\nWhat You'll Do\nLead the organization and end-to-end operations that collect, annotate, validate, and deliver high-quality real-world data at the scale, speed, and cost required for ML and autonomy development.\n\nPartner with ML and autonomy teams to translate model needs into data requirements, collection strategies, and operational priorities.\n\nDesign and improve annotation, validation, and quality-control workflows, using tooling, automation, and metrics to optimize quality, coverage, speed, and cost.\n\nDevelop managers and teams, establish clear ownership, and build a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.\n\nLead cross-functional programs and drive decisions across operations, engineering, ML, and autonomy.\n\nUse operational data and feedback to identify bottlenecks and drive automation or engineering improvements that increase scale without proportional growth in manual effort or cost.\n\nWhat You'll Bring\nExperience leading and scaling operational or technical teams, including developing managers.\n\nExperience owning technically complex operational systems and improving their performance at scale.\n\nStrong systems thinking and technical judgment across people, process, hardware, software, and infrastructure.\n\nExperience leading ambiguous, cross-functional work from problem definition through sustained operation.\n\nStrong judgment in balancing quality, throughput, cost, and reliability.\n\nA track record of using metrics, tooling, and automation to drive measurable operational improvements.\n\nClear communication and the ability to drive alignment and decisions across technical and operational teams.\n\nWhat Will Make You Stand Out\nExperience designing or operating large-scale data labeling or annotation programs.\n\nExperience managing external vendors or distributed workforces supporting data operations.\n\nExperience with machine learning, autonomy, robotics, aerospace, or other sensor-rich physical systems.\n\nFamiliarity with the ML data lifecycle, including data collection, sampling, annotation, validation, dataset generation, and model feedback loops.\n\nExperience translating model performance gaps into targeted real-world data collection.\n\nFamiliarity with multimodal datasets, sensor data, telemetry, or logging systems.\n\nWhat Success Looks Like\nThe right data reaches ML teams faster, at higher quality and lower cost. Data collection becomes increasingly deliberate, annotation and processing scale efficiently, and model needs translate quickly into action in the field. Ultimately, you will own a critical part of how Zipline learns from the real world.\nWhat Else You Need To Know \nThe starting cash range for this role is $150,000 - $180,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; overtime pay; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more. \nZipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.\nWe value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!\nVoluntary Self-Identification\nFor government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.\nAs set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6551,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Drones & UAVs","Delivery","Logistics"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-29T14:36:18Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 63 · green card filings: 13","filings_12m":63,"filings_prev_12m":47,"green_card_filings_12m":13,"median_offered_wage_usd":170658,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":25,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.579,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":60,"expected_fill_days":58,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":180000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-01T19:29:03Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":29849,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-02T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":15878},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=15878"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fzipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fzipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fzipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/zipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fzipline-manager-data-operations-annotations-autonomy-data"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3463258}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"zipline.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3463258},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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