Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering - State, Local, Educational (SLED) Top 1200

Skydio is the leading US drone company and the world leader in autonomous flight. Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to join our team as Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering for the SLED Top 1200. The Top 1200 is the band of agencies immediately below Majors, and it is where the Drone as First Responder motion moves from bespoke to repeatable. The segment runs as one national team today and may later split into East and West regions. This is a remote role requiring approximately 30% travel. The role reports to the Director, Solutions Engineering – SLED.

Responsibilities

Hire, onboard, coach, and retain your team, with clear ownership and coverage across the territories in your segment, and develop people beyond the seat they are in; Set the bar for technical quality, including demos, trial plans, site assessments, and customer-facing documentation; Own capacity across your segment, deciding where Solutions Engineering time goes and making tradeoffs visible to leadership; Own the technical win across the Top 1200 nationally, pairing one Solutions Engineer to each Key Account Leader; Serve as the senior technical escalation point on critical pursuits, deployments, and customer issues; Partner with Sales leadership on pipeline, forecast, and account planning, and on the land-and-expand motion; Systematize demo standards, site assessment quality, and trial design so the segment can split regionally; Own site assessment quality as a performance measure; Hold the bar on proofs of concept tied to active opportunities with measurable operational value; Guide integration and airspace strategy, including CAD and dispatch, video and evidence management, streaming platforms, BVLOS approvals, waivers, COAs, and docked operations; Maintain command of the public sector procurement path, including cooperative contracts, grant funded programs, and public sector buying cycles; Be the aggregated voice of the customer to Product and Engineering; Build enablement content, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets; Maintain first-hand product knowledge through frequent hands-on use

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; 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 the ability to lead integration discussions; A track record of hiring, onboarding, and developing technical people, and of keeping them; Comfort operating inside a Sales organization, including owning a quota, deal strategy, and the judgment to know when to commit technical resources and when to decline; Excellent written and verbal communication; Lead by example, willing to do whatever is needed to get a customer situation resolved; 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 for all Skydio employees 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, 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 a period of rapid growth

Benefits

Equity in the form of stock options; Comprehensive benefits packages; Group health insurance plans; Paid vacation time; Sick leave; Holiday pay; 401K savings plan; Relocation assistance may be provided for eligible roles