Real Estate Contracts Manager

About Zipline

Zipline 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. 

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, Zipline 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 

Zipline builds and operates autonomous delivery systems that move essential goods where and when they are needed. Real estate agreements enable the sites from which that system operates; clear, well-managed contracts help teams secure, develop, and operate those sites responsibly.

As Real Estate Contracts Manager, you will own the day-to-day lifecycle of routine real estate agreements and the systems behind them. You will partner with Legal, Real Estate, Site Acquisition, and Site Development to enable reliable site-contract execution, accurate obligation management, and visibility into deadlines and risk, escalating nonstandard matters to counsel. You’ll be a core member of a strong, friendly, passionate, in-house legal function and will report to Zipline’s Deputy General Counsel–Head of Commercial. If you're energized by tackling meaningful problems, excited to innovate and radically improve processes, and motivated by work that truly matters, we'd love to hear from you.

What You'll Do 

• Manage standard real estate agreements from intake through drafting, negotiation, approvals, signature, filing, obligation tracking, amendment, renewal, and closeout.
• Draft, redline, and negotiate routine leases, amendments, access agreements, licenses, consents, notices, assignments, LOIs, term sheets, and site-related agreements within attorney-approved guidelines.
• Independently resolve routine contracting issues and escalate nonstandard terms, material risk, or matters outside approved playbooks to attorneys.
• Build and maintain templates, clause libraries, fallback positions, approval workflows, intake forms, signature processes, and escalation matrices.
• Serve as the day-to-day contact for landlords, brokers, property managers, outside counsel, vendors, and internal teams on routine contract matters.
• Maintain an accurate, searchable repository and report contract status, deadlines, open issues, cycle times, recurring negotiation points, and outside-counsel usage.
• Improve CLM, document-management, and lease-administration workflows, including metadata, permissions, dashboards, reporting, and user adoption.

What You'll Bring

• At least 8 years of relevant real estate industry experience, including direct experience with leasing contracts and lease administration.
• Ability to draft, negotiate, and administer routine real estate agreements, including leases, amendments, access agreements, licenses, and related documents.
• Experience using contract lifecycle management, document-management, or lease-administration tools to maintain reliable contract data and workflows.
• Sound judgment about when to apply approved positions independently and when to escalate legal, commercial, or operational risk.
• Strong organization and project-management skills across competing deadlines, approvals, documentation, and stakeholder requests.
• Clear, practical communication and the ability to build productive relationships with cross-functional teams and external real estate partners.
• Ability to work full-time in person from Zipline’s South San Francisco headquarters.
• At least 8 years of relevant experience in the real estate industry

What Else You Need To Know

The starting cash range for this role is $120,000-150,000. 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.

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!

Must be eligible to work in the United States

Voluntary Self-Identification

For 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.

As 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.