Manager, Solutions Engineering - Utilities

Skydio•San Mateo, CA

1d•$210,000 - $275,000•Remote

About The Position

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.

Requirements

Prior experience as a Solutions Engineer, Solutions Architect, or equivalent technical pre-sales role serving electric or water utilities.
Working knowledge of utility inspection payloads and data workflows: thermography, LiDAR acquisition and processing, photogrammetry, and survey-grade accuracy requirements.
Familiarity with GIS and enterprise integrations — ESRI, DroneDeploy, REST-based APIs, and customer data lake patterns.
Understanding of the regulatory and procurement environment for regulated utilities, including PUC approval cycles, capital planning, and BVLOS waiver pathways.
Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to move between a lineman, a GIS analyst, and a VP of Operations in the same day.
Demonstrated people leadership: hiring, coaching, performance management, and building team process from a blank page. First-time managers with strong technical leadership track records will be considered.
Lead by example. Willing to do whatever is needed to get a customer situation resolved.
FAA Part 107 Certificate, or the ability to obtain one within 60 days of hire.
Ability to travel up to 50% to support customer engagements, team field activities, and company events.
Ability to lift up to 60 lbs unaided.

Nice To Haves

Direct utility industry experience — utility UAS program leadership, line work, distribution operations, or asset management — is strongly preferred.
Prior utility UAS program ownership on the customer side.
Experience with condition-based maintenance programs and asset health analytics.
Experience with dock-based, remote, and BVLOS operations at scale.
Familiarity with NERC, FERC, or state PUC reporting obligations.
Working knowledge of Salesforce, Jira, Databricks, or equivalents.
Track record of building and scaling a technical team through a period of rapid growth.

Responsibilities

Lead the team: 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, DroneDeploy, REST-based APIs, and customer data lake patterns.
Maintain command of the regulatory and procurement environment for regulated utilities, including PUC approval cycles, capital planning, and BVLOS waiver pathways.
Partner with the Utility Solutions Specialist function to bring deep specialist engagement into strategic accounts without diluting generalist coverage.
Direct the team’s product feedback into the Inspection and Mapping and Cloud product teams; ensure PRDs and gap submissions from your team are specific, prioritized, and tied to revenue.
Build and maintain scalable technical assets — reference architectures, demo scripts, workflow documentation, and playbooks — that reduce time-to-productivity for new Solutions Engineers.
Maintain first-hand product knowledge through frequent hands-on use, sufficient to engage meaningfully with both customers and your own team.