Operations Readiness Program Manager, Côte d'Ivoire

About Meridian Softworks Meridian Softworks 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, Meridian Softworks 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, Meridian Softworks 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 Every new Meridian Softworks site brings fast, reliable access to essential medical products closer to the people who need them. But a site is not ready simply because construction is complete. It is ready when the people are trained, the systems are tested, the approvals are secured, and the operation can deliver safely and reliably from its first flight onward. We are hiring an Operations Readiness Program Manager to lead new Long Range Platform launches across Côte d’Ivoire. You will own country-level readiness for multiple concurrent site launches—making launch decisions, driving cross-functional alignment, and raising the operational bar so sites launch faster, safer, and scale reliably. This work directly enables Meridian Softworks’s mission to build an instant delivery system that delivers critical medical and commercial goods across hard-to-reach regions; your success reduces time-to-service, increases launch reliability, and ensures safe, certified flight operations in challenging field environments. What You'll Do Own end-to-end operational readiness for 3–6 concurrent Long Range Platform site launches across Nigeria, from planning through first flight and early stabilization; maintain an integrated program plan with milestones, dependencies, risks, and mitigation actions. Define and enforce clear go/no-go criteria and measurable acceptance standards for safety, staffing, training & certification, infrastructure, equipment, communications, power, charging systems, and first-flight procedures. Maintain and report against launch KPIs (e.g., staffing readiness %, certification completion %, equipment acceptance pass rate, launch go/no-go rate) and use those metrics to stop or green-light launches. Lead the cross-functional readiness cadence and day-to-day decision rhythm, driving alignment between Recruiting, Academy, Engineering, Construction, Supply Chain, Safety/Regulatory, Partnerships, and Country Leadership; resolve conflicts and escalate issues with clear decision requests. Validate readiness through field verification: lead on-site checkouts, acceptance tests, and flight-readiness demonstrations; identify and close launch-critical gaps before first flight. Own staffing and competency readiness: confirm role fills, onboarding, and on-site proficiency; own the decision that site teams can operate independently and safely at first flight. Coordinate regulatory and community-readiness actions required for launch; ensure permit/approval evidence and safety artifacts meet acceptance standards before launch. Lead post-launch reviews and root-cause analysis, measure performance against launch targets (e.g., time-to-service, initial reliability), and convert findings into updated standards, playbooks, and training requirements. Escalate unresolved safety, regulatory, or critical-path blockers promptly with recommended remediation and clear authority boundaries. What You'll Bring 5+ years program management, field operations, or deployment experience in technical, regulated, or aviation-adjacent environments; direct site launch or activation experience required/preferred as documented in prior roles. Proven track record managing multi-stakeholder launches or rollouts across field sites with measurable outcomes (examples: number of sites launched, % time-to-launch reduction, reduced safety incident rate); be prepared to cite specific metrics fro