Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering - National Security (Defense)

Skydio is a U.S. drone company specializing in autonomous flight, artificial intelligence, and end-to-end unmanned aerial systems. The Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering – National Security, Defense leads a technical team supporting defense and intelligence customers through requirements development, evaluations, field trials, system integration, deployments, and customer enablement.

Responsibilities:

• Hire, onboard, coach, and retain your team, with clear ownership and coverage across the agencies and components in your segment, and develop people beyond the seat they are in
• Set the bar for technical quality — demos, trial plans, integration designs, RFI and RFP responses, and customer-facing documentation that hold up in front of operators, engineers, and program leadership
• 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
• Set a sustainable operating rhythm for a team that travels hard. Manage deployment tempo deliberately so field presence does not come at the cost of retention
• Own the technical strategy for pursuits across your accounts: evaluation and down-select strategy, proof of concept and field trial design, and the technical narrative that differentiates Skydio
• 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 pilot program into a program of record
• Shape requirements upstream. Get your team in front of program offices, capability development staffs, and operators early so solicitations reflect capability we actually have
• Build the muscle to compete in exercises and operational assessments. Service and SOF selection decisions are frequently made in the field, under observation. Plan for that as the primary proving ground, not a follow-on step
• Build and maintain team fluency in the accreditation path — ATO, impact levels for cloud hosting, NIPR and SIPR employment, cross-domain considerations — and in NDAA compliance, Blue UAS status, and the vehicles these customers buy through: programs of record, OTAs, SBIR Phase III, IDIQs, and unit-level O&M
• Guide integration strategy with the systems these forces already fight with: TAK and its SOF variants, MANET and secure tactical radios, tactical C2 and fires applications, and service mission-planning environments
• Own the airworthiness and airspace picture across service lines, including service flight clearances, shipboard considerations, BVLOS approvals, waivers, COAs, and range and installation approvals
• Understand employment in contested and degraded conditions — EW, GPS-denied, comms-limited — well enough to design honest test plans and keep the team from overpromising
• Be the aggregated voice of the customer to Product and Engineering. Turn field observations into prioritized, defensible requirements rather than a list of one-off asks
• Build the enablement content, reference architectures, and reusable technical assets that let the team scale, and 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 supporting defense customers
• 5+ years of federal government or defense experience in a discipline relevant to UAS — operations, maintenance, ISR, test and evaluation, acquisition, or training
• 1+ years leading a technical team, formally or as a technical lead with hiring and mentorship responsibility. First-time managers with a demonstrated record of leading and developing people in an operational environment will be considered
• Demonstrated understanding of a defense acquisition process for technology, from requirements development through evaluation, award, and fielding
• Technical depth in at least one core area: UAS platforms, RF and datalink systems, EO/IR and other sensor payloads, software integration and APIs, cloud and data architecture, or government IT security
• 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 general officer without changing the facts
• Lead by example. Willing to do whatever is needed to get a customer situation resolved
• Active Secret or Top Secret security clearance, or the ability to obtain one
• Direct experience supporting SOCOM or its components (NSWC, MARSOC, AFSOC, USASOC, JSOC), a Theater Special Operations Command, or Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force or Space Force units
• Prior military UAS operator, maintainer, or instructor certification
• Experience with shipboard, small boat, or maritime UAS employment, including launch and recovery from a moving deck
• Experience in contested or degraded environments — EW, GPS-denied, comms-limited — and with mission planning, CONOPS, and TTP development for small UAS
• Hands-on experience with MANET radios and secure comms (TSM, TrellisWare, Silvus, Persistent Systems), and familiarity with counter-UAS and airspace deconfliction
• Experience navigating an RMF package or ATO from the vendor side, and with OTAs, prototype agreements, or SBIR Phase III transitions
• Familiarity with foreign disclosure, ITAR, and FMS processes
• Working knowledge of Salesforce, Palantir, Databricks, or equivalents