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Salary: USD 172,000 - 215,000 / annual
Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to manage the technical arm of its State, Local, and Educational (SLED) go-to-market motion in the East region. This role combines people leadership with hands-on technical expertise in autonomous drone deployments for public safety, first responders, and government agencies.
You will lead a Solutions Engineering team responsible for turning operational problems into program designs, proving capability in the field, and ensuring Skydio's products are deployed and integrated at scale. The team is measured on technical win rate, proof-of-concept outcomes, program expansion, and site assessment quality.
Key responsibilities include:
**Team Leadership:** Hire, onboard, coach, and retain your team with clear territorial ownership. Set the bar for technical quality in demos, trial plans, site assessments, and customer-facing documentation. Own capacity allocation and make tradeoffs visible to leadership.
**Technical Wins:** Own the technical win across the East majors portfolio, including citywide programs spanning multiple docks and agencies. Serve as the senior technical escalation point on critical pursuits, deployments, and customer issues. Partner with Sales leadership on pipeline, forecast, and account planning to drive land-and-expand motions.
**Program Ownership:** Own site assessment quality as a performance measure. Hold the bar on structured proofs of concept tied to active opportunities. Guide integration and airspace strategy including CAD, dispatch, video management, BVLOS approvals, waivers, and docked operations. Maintain command of public sector procurement paths, cooperative contracts, and grant-funded programs.
**Customer Advocacy:** Be the aggregated voice of the customer to Product and Engineering, turning field observations into prioritized requirements. Build enablement content, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets that enable team scaling.
This is a remote role with approximately 30% travel required for customer engagements, field activities, deployments, team onsites, and company events. You will report 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 demonstrated leadership and people development records 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, with 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
- FAA Part 107 certification strongly encouraged within first 60 days and required for certain positions
**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 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.
