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Salary: USD 144,000 - 200,000 / annual
Skydio is the leading US autonomous drone company, serving defense, public safety, and enterprise customers. This role leads a national sales team focused on the higher education segment, where universities and colleges are deploying Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs to respond faster to emergencies, manage large events, and demonstrate institutional commitment to campus safety.
As Key Account Director, Campus, you will manage a team of Key Account Leaders selling into large universities and colleges with dedicated police departments. This is a first-line management role with three core responsibilities: recruiting talented sellers, coaching them into high performers, and retaining them. You will not carry your own accounts; your success is measured by your team's collective results.
Your responsibilities include:
**RECRUIT**: Build and maintain a continuous talent pipeline. Run a rigorous, structured hiring process focused on integrity, team instinct, conversational craft, and AI fluency. Personally close candidates and onboard new Key Account Leaders with a clear ramp path from day one to first closed deal.
**COACH**: Conduct 1:1s and deal reviews that build judgment. Get into the field for demos, customer meetings, and executive conversations, then provide specific, actionable feedback. Coach competitive strategy, MEDDPICC rigor, channel fluency, forecast discipline, and AI tool workflows. Build expertise in institutional sales—navigating buying committees, general counsel, risk officers, and skeptical campus communities.
**RETAIN**: Build a team people don't want to leave through clear expectations, real development paths, and recognition. Own territory and quota design for fairness and achievability. Address disengagement early and serve as the escalation path your team trusts.
**RUN THE SEGMENT**: Own the segment number—pipeline coverage, forecast accuracy, linearity. Partner with Channel on strategy and deal structures. Act as executive sponsor on largest pursuits. Represent customer insight and competitive intelligence to Marketing and Product. Tailor the public safety playbook for campus nuances (wider buying committees, academic calendar budget cycles, community surveillance concerns). Partner on cooperative and system-wide contract vehicles.
You will work alongside peer Directors, Sales Engineering, Business Development, Marketing, Strategic Relationships, Government Relations, and Mission Success. The role requires setting standards for how the team works: everyone uses AI tools systematically as part of territory management, and you will model, coach, and hire for that fluency.
This is a highly competitive market. Your team will sell against incumbent platforms and well-funded challengers. Success depends on integrity, team collaboration, conversational excellence, and curiosity about how institutions operate.
**REQUIREMENTS**
Required:
- 2+ years leading quota-carrying sellers as a first-line manager, with documented team attainment year by year, including years missed and changes made
- 4+ years total in enterprise software, hardware, or SaaS sales, including personal success closing complex, multi-stakeholder deals
- Demonstrated success recruiting sellers: real network, clear point of view on quality, structured process you can describe, ability to close candidates
- Articulated coaching approach with specific examples of people who improved measurably under your leadership
- Strong voluntary retention history, record of developing people into larger roles, judgment to move quickly when someone isn't right
- Experience selling or leading teams into SLED (State, Local, Education) customers, with working knowledge of procurement vehicles and budget/grant cycles
- Fluency selling with and through channel partners
- Daily, systematic use of AI tools in your own work; at least one workflow, analysis, or tool you built or changed in the last two years that measurably improved results (you will be asked to demonstrate, not describe)
- Executive presence with customer leadership and your own team; high personal integrity under quota pressure
- Ability to travel at least 50% of the time; must be based in United States
- Experience with higher education or other institutional customers
- Good judgment about when to run standard playbook versus segment-specific adaptations
- FAA Part 107 certification strongly encouraged within first 60 days; required for certain positions
Preferred:
- Experience in higher education, public safety (law enforcement, fire, emergency management)
- Experience building a team from small base rather than inheriting mature one
- Built something with AI that other people use (research tool, analysis, team workflow); can discuss what first version got wrong
- Curiosity demonstrated through ability to explain how things outside sales work (agency budgets, airspace waivers, aircraft autonomy) in plain language; learns fast
- Familiarity with MEDDPICC, Salesforce, Clari, BGov, GovWin, Slack, Google Workspace
- UAV, robotics, or emerging technology background; comfort in fast-moving environment
About Skydio
Defense / GovTech; Industrial — autonomous drones for defense, public safety, and enterprise.
