Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering - State, Local, Educational (SLED) Majors East

About the role

Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to join our team as Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering for SLED Majors East. This role carries some of the most complex programs in our portfolio: multi-site, citywide Drone as First Responder deployments, statewide highway and transit programs, and federal work through DOJ, alongside the Canadian public safety business. This is a remote role. 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.

About the team

The SLED Solutions Engineering team is the technical arm of Skydio's state and local go-to-market motion. We sit between the agency and the product: turning operational problems into program designs, proving capability in the field, and making sure Skydio's products are used, integrated, and flown at scale. The team is measured on technical win rate, trial and proof of concept outcomes, program expansion, site assessment quality, and the requirements we push back into the product organization. Solutions Engineers are critical members of the Skydio organization and work closely with Key Account Leaders, Engineering, and Product to support deal progression, customer confidence, successful deployments, and the 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 the territories in your segment, and develop people beyond the seat they are in.
• Set the bar for technical quality — demos, trial plans, site assessments, and customer-facing documentation that hold up in front of a chief, a sheriff, or a city council.
• Own capacity across your segment: decide where Solutions Engineering time goes, say no when it needs to be said, and make the tradeoffs visible to leadership.
• Drive technical wins: own the technical win across the East majors portfolio, including citywide programs that run multiple docks and span several agencies inside a single customer.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point on critical pursuits, deployments, and customer issues; jump in and work the problem yourself, and be in the field when it matters.
• Partner with Sales leadership on pipeline, forecast, and account planning, and on the land-and-expand motion that turns a first dock into a citywide program.
• Own the Majors East problem set: own site assessment quality as a performance measure; hold the bar on proofs of concept; guide integration and airspace strategy; maintain command of the public sector procurement path.
• Represent the customer inside Skydio: be the aggregated voice of the customer to Product and Engineering; turn field observations into prioritized, defensible requirements; build enablement content, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets; maintain first-hand product knowledge through frequent hands-on use.

What makes you a good fit

• 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; you can brief an operator, a program manager, and a senior executive without changing the facts.
• Lead by example: willing to do whatever is needed to get a customer situation resolved.

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.

What is required

• 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.

Compensation

At Skydio, our compensation packages for regular, full-time employees include competitive base salaries, equity in the form of stock options, and comprehensive benefits packages. Compensation will vary based on factors, including skill level, proficiencies, transferable knowledge, and experience. Relocation assistance may also be provided for eligible roles. The annual base salary range for this position is $172,000 - $215,000 plus commission*. Fundamentally, we believe that equity is the key to long-term financial growth, and we ensure all regular, full-time employees have the opportunity to significantly benefit from the company's success.

Benefits

• Paid vacation time, sick leave, holiday pay.
• 401K savings plan.
• Eligibility to enroll in the Company’s group health insurance plans.