Field Readiness Lead, Solutions Engineering

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.

Skydio is seeking an experienced operations leader to join our team as Manager, Solutions Operations. This role owns the technical operations the Solutions Engineering organization runs on: the headquarters demo program and the aircraft, docks, and environment behind it, the capture of flight, imagery, and integration content, and the library that holds all of it. You will lead live demonstrations for VIP customers, partners, and government visitors alongside Skydio leadership on a regular basis, and you will use what you own to bring new Solutions Engineers and Solutions Specialists up to speed and keep the field current on new capability.

This role is cross vertical. It touches every part of Solutions Engineering across National Security, SLED, Commercial, and the Launch Team, and it works with the account teams, Engineering, Product, Customer Success, Training, and Sales Enablement those teams depend on. The hard part is pace and breadth. Product ships faster than any one SE can track, the organization is hiring across the globe, and each vertical has its own customers and workflows.

This seat is how the demo standard, the content, and the ramp stay consistent without four directors rebuilding the same thing.

This role is based at Skydio headquarters in San Mateo, California. Travel of approximately 15% is required to capture content in the field, support field teams, and support company events. If you have most of what is listed below and are confident you can learn the rest, we want to hear from you.

This role reports to the VP, Solutions Engineering.

Solutions Engineering is the technical arm of Skydio's go-to-market motion. We sit between the customer 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.

This seat is measured on the readiness and quality of the demonstrations that run out of headquarters, on how current and used the content library is, and on time to productivity for new Solutions Engineers and Specialists.

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.

Run the HQ demo program

• Lead live demonstrations at headquarters for VIP customers, customer summits, partners, press, and government visitors, presenting with Skydio executives, from a short flight to a full dock and command software walkthroughs.

• Own the demo environment: aircraft, docks, network, controllers, and props, plus the pre-flight discipline that keeps a demonstration from failing in front of a chief.

• Maintain airworthiness, batteries, firmware, and spares so the fleet is ready to fly on short notice, and coordinate demo scheduling and dock availability with the teams that share the site.

• Set the demo standard the rest of the organization runs against.

Own the content and the library

• Plan and run capture missions, including flights, imagery, scans, and dock deployments, that produce the footage, data, and screenshots the whole organization uses.

• Build demo scripts, reference architectures, and trial plan templates out of what the strongest Solutions Engineers already do, rather than inventing a parallel standard.

• Own the library. One place, one version, findable in under a minute. Run a review cadence against the release calendar, retire what is stale, and track what actually gets used.

• Capture integration and competitive material: what the platforms our customers already run actually do, where Skydio wins, and what an honest answer sounds like where it does not.

Enable the team

• Own onboarding for new Solutions Engineers and Solutions Specialists: the curriculum, hands-on flight and dock time, the shadowing plan, and the checkpoints that tell a manager a new hire is ready to run a customer…