Hiring: Head of Weather Systems Company: Zipline Location: South San Francisco, CA Job Posted Time: 2026-09-16 15:33:22 Employment Type: Full-time Target Skills & Keywords : AWS, C++, Kafka, Kubernetes, NumPy, Pandas, Python, Rust About the job Experience: •6+ years industry experience shipping mission-critical decision systems; demonstrable ownership of automated operational decision logic in production at scale. Required Skills: •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. You are the single technical and product owner for system behavior and reliability. •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 with our first year of commercial operations. •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. •Strategically drive 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. Qualifications: •Minimum 6+ years industry experience shipping mission-critical decision systems; demonstrable ownership of automated operational decision logic in production at scale. •Required technical skills: deep fluency in scientific Python (Pandas, NumPy, Xarray, NetCDF), experience with time-series/streaming systems (Kafka or equivalent), and comfort reading/working with production stacks (Kubernetes, AWS, Rust/C++ codebases). Ability to prototype and ship models into production pipelines. •Domain expertise: strong working knowledge of meteorology, aviation weather, or related geospatial environmental science; ability to explain physics, uncertainty, and operational implications to non-experts and regulators. •Systems judgment: experience defining quantitative metrics (false-positive/negative tradeoffs), designing validation experiments (simulation + field tests), and documenting failure modes and rollback criteria. •Operations intensity: history working with 24/7 operational systems, incident response, and SLAs; comfortable making and owning high-consequence trade-offs under uncertainty. •Leadership: experience leading or directly influencing small cross-disciplinary teams and driving measurable improvements in uptime, throughput, or reliability within 6–12 months. •Logistics & constraints: must be able to work onsite in South San Francisco full-time and travel internationally •What Else You Need To Know •The starting cash range for this role is $185,000 to $255,000. Zipline Compensation: •$185,000 - $255,000 / year Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don't miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!