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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 regional sales team focused on the high-volume public safety segment—agencies with 1 to 40 sworn personnel across the Central US territory (IA, IL, KS, MN, MO, ND, NE, SD, TX, WI).
As Key Account Director, you will manage a team of Key Account Leaders selling into Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs. This is a first-line management role with three core responsibilities: recruiting top talent, coaching them into excellent sellers, and retaining them. You will not carry your own accounts; your success is measured by your team's collective performance.
Key responsibilities include:
**RECRUIT**: Build a continuous talent pipeline and run a rigorous hiring process. Screen for integrity, team instinct, conversational craft, and AI fluency—not just closed-won history. Onboard new Key Account Leaders with a clear ramp path and hold them accountable to attainment milestones.
**COACH**: Run 1:1s and deal reviews that build judgment. Get into the field on demos, customer meetings, and executive conversations, then provide specific, usable feedback. Coach competitive strategy, MEDDPICC rigor, channel fluency, and forecast honesty. Build shared workflows for customer research, call prep, RFP response, and pipeline analysis using AI tools.
**RETAIN**: Build a team people don't want to leave through clear expectations, real development paths, and recognition. Own territory and quota design for achievability and equity. Address disengagement early and be the escalation path your team trusts.
**RUN THE REGION**: Own pipeline coverage, forecast accuracy, and 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. Coordinate with Mid-City and T1200 leaders on account routing and smooth customer transitions.
What makes this segment distinct is scale and velocity. You will lead through the funnel using conversion rates, cycle time, stage velocity, and activity quality to intervene early. You also own the region's upmarket radar—spotting small-city agencies that are leading edges of larger opportunities and routing them appropriately.
You will set the standard for how the team works. Everyone uses AI tools as a normal part of running their territory. You will model that, coach to it, and hire for it. This is a competitive market; you will set the standard for how your team wins against incumbent platforms and well-funded challengers, often working alongside channel partners.
**REQUIREMENTS**
Required:
- 2+ years leading quota-carrying sellers as a first-line manager, with documented team attainment year by year (including years missed and what changed)
- 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 what good looks like, structured process you can describe, ability to close candidates
- Articulated coaching approach with specific examples of people who got measurably better working for you
- 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 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 made you or your team measurably better (you will be asked to demonstrate it)
- Executive presence with both customer leadership and your own team; high personal integrity under quota pressure
- Ability to travel at least 50% of the time and based in Central US Territory
- Personal success in a high-velocity, high-volume selling environment
- Data-fluent coaching: manage a funnel by its metrics and point to specific levers behind rep results
- Experience building or maintaining a repeatable sales process that holds up as volume and headcount grow
Preferred:
- Experience in public safety (law enforcement, fire, emergency management); experience standing up or scaling a high-volume segment
- Experience building a team from a small base rather than inheriting a mature one
- Built something with AI that other people use (research tool, analysis, team workflow); can discuss what the first version got wrong
- Curiosity demonstrated through ability to explain how something outside sales works (agency budget, airspace waiver, aircraft autonomy) in plain language; learn 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.
