Key Account Leader, Campus

Skydio

7d•$110,000 - $140,000•Remote

About The Position

Skydio is hiring a Key Account Leader, Campus to own a territory within a national segment of large universities and colleges with dedicated police departments. This is a full-cycle, quota-carrying sales role: the account leader develops opportunities, manages deals from initial conversation through award, and closes business. The role reports to the Key Account Director, Campus, and works with Sales Engineering, Business Development, Channel, Marketing, Strategic Relationships, Government Relations, and Mission Success. The position is remote in the United States, with hiring in the Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, and Southwest regions, and requires at least 50% travel. The campus segment is new for Skydio, and the account leader will help build its sales playbook. The work involves understanding how each institution operates, navigating broad buying committees and academic-calendar-driven budget cycles, and helping institutions fund, approve, and deploy drone programs. The role involves selling autonomous flying robots and the artificial intelligence that powers them, competing with incumbent platforms and challengers, and working with channel partners. Daily use of AI tools is expected for research, meeting preparation, RFP responses, and pipeline analysis; AI-generated material must be reviewed before reaching customers. The company describes its standards as high integrity, collaborative selling, strong conversational skills, and curiosity paired with fluency in AI tools. The selection process includes a hiring-manager conversation, a review of sales performance and deal experience, an AI working session, a discovery and deal-strategy panel, a conversation about the candidate’s thinking, and references.

Requirements

At least 3 years carrying an individual quota in enterprise software, hardware, or SaaS sales, with year-by-year attainment details, including a missed year and what was changed afterward.
Personal success running full-cycle, multi-stakeholder deals from first conversation to signed contract.
A record of generating personal pipeline and a clear account of the share of closed business that was self-sourced.
Disciplined qualification and reliable forecasting.
Fluency in selling with and through channel partners.
Daily, systematic use of AI tools at work and at least one workflow, analysis, or tool built or changed in the last two years that measurably improved performance; candidates should be prepared to demonstrate it.
Ability to engage institutional leadership and maintain high integrity under quota pressure.
Ability to travel at least 50% of the time.
Residence in one of the Northwest, Southeast, Northeast, or Southwest regions.
Experience selling to institutional customers with broad buying committees, such as higher education, healthcare, or government.

Nice To Haves

Experience in higher education or public safety, including law enforcement, fire, or emergency management.
Experience selling to public universities or other public institutions, with working knowledge of procurement and budget cycles.
Experience building an AI tool, analysis, or workflow used by others, and ability to discuss what the first version got wrong.
Demonstrated curiosity and ability to explain a non-sales subject, such as a university budget, airspace waiver, or aircraft autonomy, in plain language and learn quickly.
Familiarity with MEDDPICC, Salesforce, Clari, BGov, GovWin, Slack, and Google Workspace.
UAV, robotics, or emerging-technology background and comfort working in a fast-moving environment.

Responsibilities

Own a territory plan, understand the institutions within it, and identify which are likely to move and why.
Generate pipeline through outbound activity, events, and partners rather than relying on inbound demand.
Engage institutions early and help shape the criteria they use to make purchasing decisions.
Run full-cycle deals from first conversation through discovery, demonstration, proof of value, proposal, procurement, and approval.
Qualify opportunities with MEDDPICC rigor and walk away from deals that are not real.
Build consensus among campus decision-makers, including public safety leaders, general counsel, risk, procurement, and student or faculty governance.
Compete against incumbent platforms and challengers by communicating Skydio’s differentiators, running displacement plays, and defending accounts.
Develop a business case that can withstand procurement review, general counsel review, and campus-community scrutiny.
Sell with and through channel partners and structure deals to help customers reach a decision.
Engage Sales Engineering, Business Development, Government Relations, and Mission Success at the appropriate points and align them around the deal outcome.
Hand off awarded customers to Mission Success and remain involved to support account growth.
Forecast honestly and maintain a clean, reliable pipeline.
Use AI tools daily for institutional research, call preparation, RFP responses, and pipeline analysis; review AI-drafted content before sharing it with customers.
Bring competitive intelligence, product gaps, and changes in institutional buying practices back to the team.
Plan territory activity around academic calendars and their budget and urgency windows.
Use cooperative and system-wide contract vehicles when they can shorten the path to award.