Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering for SLED Small Cities

Skydio is the leading US drone company and the world leader in autonomous flight, empowering diverse drone users from utility inspectors to first responders, soldiers in battlefield scenarios, and beyond.

About the Role:

Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to join as Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering for SLED Small Cities. This is a remote role with approximately 30% travel required for customer engagements, field activities, deployments, team onsites, and company events. The role reports to the Director, Solutions Engineering – SLED.

About the Team:

The SLED Solutions Engineering team acts as the technical arm of Skydio's state and local go-to-market strategy. They bridge the gap between agencies and products, transforming operational challenges into program designs, validating capabilities in the field, and ensuring Skydio’s products are deployed, integrated, and scaled.

The team is evaluated based on technical win rate, trial and proof of concept outcomes, program expansion, site assessment quality, and the requirements they feed back into the product organization.

Solutions Engineers are pivotal in Skydio’s organization, collaborating closely with Key Account Leaders, Engineering, and Product to advance deal progression, build customer confidence, ensure successful deployments, and foster long-term success of Public Safety sUAS programs.

How You’ll Make an Impact:

Lead the team

• Hire, onboard, coach, and retain your team, with clear ownership and coverage across territories, and develop people beyond their current roles.
• Set the standard for technical quality in demos, trial plans, site assessments, and customer-facing documentation that must hold up to scrutiny from agency leaders.
• Manage capacity across your segment, allocate Solutions Engineering resources, and make trade-offs visible to leadership.

Drive technical wins

• Own the technical win in a two-to-one coverage model. Leverage templated, recorded, and reusable processes to ensure scalability.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for critical pursuits, deployments, and customer issues, actively resolving problems and being present in the field when necessary.
• Collaborate with Sales leadership on pipeline, forecast, and account planning, focusing on the land-and-expand strategy to convert initial deployments into citywide programs.

Own the Small Cities problem set

• Establish the team structure, as most seats are currently open and the operating model is still developing.
• Ensure high-quality site assessments, as Solutions Engineers are directly responsible for verifying deployment locations before installation.
• Maintain rigorous standards for proofs of concept, ensuring structured deployments 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.
• Stay informed about the public sector procurement process, including cooperative contracts, grant-funded programs, and public sector buying cycles.

Represent the customer inside Skydio

• Act as the aggregated voice of the customer to Product and Engineering, translating field observations into prioritized, defensible requirements.
• Develop enablement content, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets to support team scalability, while maintaining hands-on product knowledge.

What Makes You a Good Fit:

• At least 5+ years of relevant technical experience, including time in a customer-facing technical role (e.g., solutions engineering, field engineering, or applications engineering).
• 1+ years of experience leading a technical team, either formally or as a technical lead with hiring and mentorship responsibilities.
• 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 talent, and retaining them.
• Comfort operating within a Sales organization, including owning a quota, deal strategy, and making informed decisions on technical resource allocation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to brief operators, program managers, and senior executives without altering the facts.
• Lead by example and be willing to do whatever is necessary to resolve customer situations.

Nice to Have:

• Prior public safety experience as a sworn officer, firefighter, or agency UAS program lead.
• Experience in standing up a Drone as First Responder program from waiver through go-live, including 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 similar platforms.
• A track record of building and scaling a technical team during rapid growth.

What Is Required:

• Obtaining FAA Part 107 certification within the first 60 days of employment is strongly encouraged.
• Ability to travel approximately 30% of the time.
• Ability to lift up to 60 lbs unaided.