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Salary: USD 172,000 - 215,000 / annual
Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to build and lead a technical team supporting state and local government (SLED) small cities in adopting autonomous drone technology for public safety and emergency response.
You will lead the Solutions Engineering function for the SLED Small Cities segment, reporting to the Director of Solutions Engineering – SLED. The team operates on a high-volume, transactional model with approximately one Solutions Engineer per two Key Account Leaders. Your role is to hire, onboard, and develop a team of technical professionals while driving technical wins and scaling the segment's operations.
Key Responsibilities:
LEAD THE TEAM: Hire, onboard, coach, and retain Solutions Engineers with clear territorial ownership. Set the bar for technical quality across demos, trial plans, site assessments, and customer-facing documentation. Own capacity decisions and make tradeoffs visible to leadership.
DRIVE TECHNICAL WINS: Own technical outcomes across the 2:1 coverage model, leveraging templated and reusable assets to scale. Serve as senior technical escalation for critical pursuits, deployments, and customer issues. Partner with Sales on pipeline, forecast, account planning, and land-and-expand strategies.
OWN THE SMALL CITIES PROBLEM SET: Stand up the team and operating model from the ground up. 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 (CAD, dispatch, video management, BVLOS approvals, COAs, docked operations). Maintain command of public sector procurement, including cooperative contracts and grant-funded programs.
REPRESENT THE CUSTOMER: Aggregate field observations into prioritized requirements for Product and Engineering. Build enablement content, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets. Maintain hands-on product knowledge.
Travel of approximately 30% is required to support customer engagements, field activities, deployments, team onsites, and company events.
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
- Obtaining FAA Part 107 certification within the first 60 days of employment is strongly encouraged and required for certain positions
- Ability to travel approximately 30% of the time
- Ability to lift up to 60 lbs unaided
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.
