Manager, Solutions Engineering - Utilities

Skydio is the leading US drone company and the world leader in autonomous flight, the key technology for the future of drones and aerial mobility. The Skydio team combines deep expertise in artificial intelligence, best-in-class hardware and software product development, operational excellence, and customer obsession to empower a broader, more diverse audience of drone users, from utility inspectors to first responders, soldiers in battlefield scenarios, and beyond.

US Remote – Full-time

Skydio is seeking an experienced Solutions Engineering leader to build and run the Utilities Solutions Engineering team. Utilities is Skydio’s most mature commercial vertical and this team is the technical authority behind every utility engagement, running technical discovery, designing solutions, executing dock trials, and carrying customers through deployment and expansion.

This is a remote role. Travel of up to 50% is required to support customer engagements, team field activities, trials, and company events.

This role reports to the Director, Solutions Engineering – Commercial.

The Commercial Solutions Engineering team is the technical authority behind every commercial engagement. We sit between the customer and the product: running technical discovery, designing solutions, executing paid dock trials, and carrying customers from a first site through fleet-wide rollout.

The team is measured on technical win rate, trial and proof of concept outcomes, program expansion, and the quality of requirements we push back into the product organization. Solutions Engineers operate against a shared quota with their sales counterparts, and Solutions Specialists provide domain depth as an overlay across segments.

Solutions Engineers are critical members of the Skydio Sales organization and work closely with Account Executives, Solutions Specialists, Deployment Engineers, and the Launch Team to support deal progression, customer confidence, successful deployments, and the long-term success of commercial UAS programs.

• Hire, develop, and retain a team of Utilities Solutions Engineers; own ramp, enablement, and career progression for the team.

• Set the standard for technical discovery and solution design across T&D inspection, substation inspection, storm and outage restoration, vegetation management, hydro and dam inspection, and water and wastewater assets.

• Own team productivity, engagement, and growth. Manage capacity across your segment, decide where Solutions Engineering time goes, say no when it needs to be said, and make the tradeoffs visible to Sales leadership.

• Develop people beyond the seat they are in, including career paths, promotion cases, and succession inside your team.

• Own technical win rate for the utilities vertical and partner with Utilities sales leadership on quota attainment and pipeline health.

• Govern the paid dock trial and rental motion for utility customers — scoping, success criteria, execution, and conversion to closed-won.

• Serve as the senior technical escalation point on critical pursuits, deployments, and customer issues.

• Represent Skydio at utility industry events, customer summits, and executive briefings.

• Maintain team fluency in utility inspection payloads and data workflows: thermography, LiDAR acquisition and processing, photogrammetry, and survey-grade accuracy requirements.

• Guide integration strategy with the systems these customers already run — ESRI and GIS, Drone Deploy, REST-based APIs, and customer data lake patterns.

• Maintain command of the regulatory and procurement environment for regulated utilities, including PUC…