Head of Africa Operations/ Africa COO

About You and The Role 

As Head of Africa Operations / Africa COO, you will lead the teams responsible for making Zipline’s African network work at scale. You will oversee operations across Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and additional African markets as we expand our footprint approximately threefold over the next 24 months. You will lead the launch of new operating sites, strengthen service delivery across existing markets, build a world-class organization, and create the systems and standards that allow a complex, multi-country network to perform consistently. 

This is an executive leadership role for someone who is equally energized by building organizations, solving hard operational problems, and driving execution. Reporting into the CEO of Africa, you will lead a few dozen employees directly, with a broader organization many times that size through dotted-line operational relationships in country. 

This is a rare opportunity to shape Zipline’s next phase of growth, and the future of healthcare logistics across an entire continent. The work will be challenging, highly visible, and deeply meaningful, and your decisions will directly influence how reliably essential products reach the people and communities who need them.

What You'll Do

• Define and lead the operating strategy for Zipline Africa as the network expands across existing and new markets.
• Build the organizational structure, leadership bench, operating mechanisms, and functional capabilities required to support sustaining operations and enable threefold growth over the next 24 months.
• Own the end-to-end readiness and successful launch of new Zipline countries, operating sites, and distribution centers in Africa, ensuring that infrastructure, regulatory, commercial, technology, people, logistics, quality, legal, and operations come together as an integrated system.
• Establish a consistently high standard for service delivery, customer experience, quality, safety, and operational performance across the network.
• Build an Africa logistics and warehousing model capable of supporting rapid growth, including the operating strategy for import/export, customs, duty exemptions, freight, 3PLs, inventory movement, warehousing, last-mile logistics, and country logistics.
• Create a culture and system of operational excellence that drives standardization, disciplined execution, root-cause problem solving, cross-country learning, and continuous improvement.
• Lead the organization’s focus on improving unit economics, including cost per delivery and the cost and efficiency of operating sites.
• Provide functional leadership and oversight to Country Operations through a dotted-line relationship, ensuring alignment between regional standards and country execution.
• Represent Africa Operations as a senior leader of Zipline, strengthening relationships with regulators, partners, vendors, logistics providers, and other external stakeholders.

What success looks like

In your first year, you will:

• Successfully launch multiple new nests while improving the speed, predictability, and cost of deployments.
• Improve service reliability, quality, and customer experience across existing African markets.
• Establish a scalable operating model for warehousing, inventory management, and logistics.
• Build the leadership capacity, organizational structure, and operating mechanisms required for continued expansion.
• Deliver measurable improvement in launch cost, cost per delivery, NPS, quality performance, and warehouse performance.
• Create a network-wide culture of accountability, urgency, learning, and continuous improvement.

What You'll Bring

• Significant executive-level experience scaling technology-enabled operations across multiple markets.
• A track record of building and leading organizations through rapid growth, market expansion, and operational complexity.
• Experience in logistics, last-mile delivery, or another technology-enabled service business with substantial operational and integration requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to translate strategy into an operating model, build strong leaders, and create systems that deliver consistent performance at scale.
• Experience working in regulated, infrastructure-intensive, or technically complex environments; experience in Africa and/or other emerging markets is highly preferred.
• Strong commercial and operational judgment, including the ability to improve customer outcomes and unit economics simultaneously.
• Exceptional cross-functional leadership and the ability to influence country, global, technical, commercial, and external stakeholders.
• Based in Africa or willing to relocate, with the ability to travel approximately 30%.

Leadership Profile

You are a builder of institutions, not just an operator of functions. You know how to create clarity, accountability, and momentum in an ambiguous environment, and how to develop leaders who can carry the work forward without depending on you for every decision.

You combine strategic perspective with strong operating instincts. You can define the architecture of a multi-country network, recognize when performance is off track, and mobilize the organization around the few decisions that matter most.

You are ambitious for the mission, demanding about standards, and deeply committed to building teams that are capable, resilient, and proud of what they accomplish.

What Else You Need To Know

Zipline 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.

We 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!