---
title: "Drone Delivery Operations Manager"
description: "Runs the daily operation of a drone delivery hub, managing the pilots, aircraft, loading teams and safety rules that get packages and medical supplies to…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/drone-delivery-operations-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Drone Delivery Operations Manager

**Category:** Transportation and Material Moving · **SOC code:** 53-1041 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 53-1041.00

Runs the daily operation of a drone delivery hub, managing the pilots, aircraft, loading teams and safety rules that get packages and medical supplies to customers by air.

Also advertised as: Drone Delivery Site Manager; UAS Delivery Operations Lead; Drone Fleet Operations Manager; Drone Delivery Hub Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $58,170 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $27.97/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $41,690 to $92,160, with the middle half between $49,820 and $78,530
- **Total US employment:** 9,760
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +9.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 900 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 57/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 9,760 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $41,690 |
| 25th | $49,820 |
| 50th (median) | $58,170 |
| 75th | $78,530 |
| 90th | $92,160 |
| Mean (average) | $65,010 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| GA | $81,380 | $84,513 | 150 |
| OH | $79,650 | $85,854 | 100 |
| LA | $79,460 | $90,084 | 40 |
| CO | $79,260 | $76,913 | 190 |
| CT | $78,770 | $76,025 | 50 |
| VA | $78,420 | $77,564 | 240 |
| MO | $76,450 | $84,180 | 100 |
| IN | $75,880 | $81,304 | 60 |
| PA | $75,620 | $77,502 | 450 |
| AZ | $74,780 | $74,277 | 220 |
| AR | $73,520 | $84,567 | 40 |
| NM | $72,760 | $78,905 | 50 |
| NV | $70,740 | $70,755 | 170 |
| NJ | $65,590 | $60,282 | 60 |
| FL | $62,240 | $60,185 | 740 |

22 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 37 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/drone-delivery-operations-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/drone-delivery-operations-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 9,700 in the 2025–2035 base year to 10,600 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 900 jobs, or +9.2%. Much faster than average: 9.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 900 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 64.1% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 18.5% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 10.2% |
| Some College Courses | 4.7% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 2.6% |

## What the work involves

- Schedule remote pilots, loaders and maintenance staff
- Make go or no-go decisions based on weather and airspace
- Monitor live flights and delivery performance
- Enforce safety procedures and FAA operating requirements
- Investigate incidents and report them as required
- Coordinate with retail and healthcare delivery partners
- Train new pilots and ground crew

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Transportation — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Far Vision — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Selective Attention — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 5.56 |
| C — Conventional | 4.97 |
| R — Realistic | 4.66 |
| S — Social | 2.47 |
| I — Investigative | 2.19 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 88.8 |
| ISTJ | 79.5 |
| ESFJ | 73.7 |
| ISFJ | 69.1 |
| ESTP | 67.5 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aircraft-cargo-handling-supervisor) — median $58,170
- [First-Line Supervisor of Material-Moving Machine and Vehicle Operators](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-material-moving-machine-and-vehicle-operators) — median $62,840
- [Airfield Operations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/airfield-operations-specialist) — median $56,850
- [Transportation Inspector](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-inspector) — median $92,100
- [First-Line Supervisor of Passenger Attendants](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-passenger-attendants) — median $62,840
- [First-Line Supervisor of Helpers, Laborers, and Material Movers, Hand](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-helpers-laborers-and-material-movers-hand) — median $62,840
- [Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-storage-and-distribution-manager) — median $107,230
- [Dispatcher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/dispatcher) — median $50,340
- [Industrial Truck and Tractor Operator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-truck-and-tractor-operator) — median $46,420
- [Cargo and Freight Agent](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cargo-and-freight-agent) — median $52,260

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/drone-delivery-operations-manager