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Salary: USD 172,000 - 215,000 / annual
Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to join as Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering for SLED (State and Local Education) Majors West. This remote role carries responsibility for some of Skydio's most complex programs: multi-site, citywide Drone as First Responder deployments, statewide highway and transit programs, and federal work through DOJ, alongside Canadian public safety business. Approximately 30% travel is required to support customer engagements, field activities, deployments, team onsites, and company events. The role reports to the Director, Solutions Engineering – SLED.
You will lead the SLED Solutions Engineering team, the technical arm of Skydio's state and local go-to-market motion, sitting between agency customers and the product organization. The team is measured on technical win rate, trial and proof of concept outcomes, program expansion, site assessment quality, and requirements pushed into product.
Key responsibilities include: hiring, onboarding, coaching, and retaining your team with clear territorial coverage; setting the bar for technical quality in demos, trial plans, site assessments, and customer-facing documentation; owning capacity decisions and making tradeoffs visible to leadership; owning technical wins across the Majors West portfolio including citywide programs spanning multiple agencies; serving as senior technical escalation on critical pursuits, deployments, and customer issues; partnering with Sales on pipeline, forecast, and account planning; owning site assessment quality as a performance measure; holding the bar on proofs of concept tied to active opportunities; guiding integration and airspace strategy including CAD, dispatch, video management, streaming platforms, BVLOS approvals, waivers, COAs, and docked operations; maintaining command of public sector procurement including cooperative contracts and grant-funded programs; aggregating customer voice to Product and Engineering; and building enablement content and reference architectures that enable team scaling.
Skydio combines deep expertise in artificial intelligence, best-in-class hardware and software development, operational excellence, and customer obsession to serve utility inspectors, first responders, soldiers in battlefield scenarios, and beyond.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 5+ years of relevant technical experience, including time in a customer-facing technical role (solutions engineering, field engineering, or applications engineering)
- 1+ years leading a technical team, formally or as a technical lead with hiring and mentorship responsibility; first-time managers with demonstrated record of leading and developing people will be considered
- Strong understanding of drone technology, Public Safety sUAS operations, and regulatory compliance, including Drone as First Responder concepts of operation and dock-based remote operations
- Working knowledge of Public Safety technologies, including CAD, VMS, and related software platforms, and ability to lead integration discussions
- Track record of hiring, onboarding, and developing technical people and retaining them
- Comfort operating inside a Sales organization, including owning a quota, deal strategy, and judgment to know when to commit technical resources and when to decline
- Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to brief an operator, program manager, and senior executive without changing the facts
- Lead by example; willing to do whatever is needed to resolve customer situations
- Ability to travel approximately 30% of the time
- Ability to lift up to 60 lbs unaided
- FAA Part 107 certification within first 60 days of employment strongly encouraged and required for certain positions
NICE TO HAVE:
- Prior public safety service as sworn officer, firefighter, or agency UAS program lead
- Experience standing up a Drone as First Responder program from waiver through go-live with dock-based, remote, and BVLOS operations at scale
- Familiarity with grant funding pathways and cooperative purchasing vehicles used by state and local agencies
- Working knowledge of Salesforce, Palantir, Databricks, or equivalents
- Track record of building and scaling a technical team through rapid growth
About Skydio
Defense / GovTech; Industrial — autonomous drones for defense, public safety, and enterprise.
