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Salary: USD 172,000 - 215,000 / annual
Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to build and lead a new national team focused on corrections and campus security. This is a greenfield opportunity: while Skydio has done corrections and campus work, there is no established function, playbook, or reference architecture. You will own the technical win across both segments nationally, build the practice from the ground up, and serve as the senior technical escalation point on critical pursuits and deployments.
You will lead a team of Solutions Engineers, setting the bar for technical quality in demos, trial plans, site assessments, and customer-facing documentation. You own capacity allocation across your segment, make tradeoffs visible to leadership, and decide when to commit resources and when to decline. You will partner closely with Sales leadership on pipeline, forecast, and account planning, turning first deployments into citywide programs.
The role requires deep ownership of two distinct problem sets—contraband interdiction, perimeter surveillance, and emergency response in corrections; perimeter security and campus safety in higher education. You will build site assessment quality as a performance measure, structure proofs of concept tied to active opportunities, guide integration and airspace strategy (CAD, dispatch, video management, BVLOS approvals, docked operations), and maintain command of public sector procurement paths including cooperative contracts and grant-funded programs.
You will represent the customer inside Skydio, turning field observations into prioritized requirements for Product and Engineering. You will build enablement content, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets that let the team scale. Travel of approximately 30% is required to support customer engagements, field activities, deployments, team onsites, and company events. This role reports to the Director, Solutions Engineering – SLED.
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 a 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 on resource commitment
- Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to brief operators, program managers, and senior executives without changing facts
- Willingness to lead by example and do whatever is needed to resolve customer situations
- Ability to travel approximately 30% of the time
- Ability to lift up to 60 lbs unaided
- Obtaining FAA Part 107 certification within the first 60 days of employment is strongly encouraged
NICE TO HAVE:
- Prior public safety service as a sworn officer, firefighter, or agency UAS program lead
- Experience standing up a Drone as First Responder program from waiver through go-live, and 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.
