Key Account Leader, Small Cities East

Skydio, Inc.; Tate Township (OH); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Skydio, Inc. is seeking a Key Account Leader, Small City to own a public safety territory in the East.

You will manage full-cycle sales from discovery to closure, coordinating with engineering, business development, and government relations to secure funding and deployment of the Drone as First Responder programs. Ideal candidates have 2+ years in enterprise software/hardware or SaaS sales, with quota attainment, and a proven ability to build pipelines and sell through channel partners while

Qualifications

• 2+ years carrying an individual quota in enterprise software, hardware, or SaaS sales with documented attainment.
• Proven ability to run full-cycle, multi-stakeholder deals from discovery to close.
• Track record of building and maintaining your own pipeline.
• Disciplined qualification and forecast you can defend with data.
• Fluency selling with and through channel partners.
• Daily, systematic use of AI tools in your own work and a proven workflow you built or improved.
• Presence with agency leadership and integrity under quota pressure.
• Willingness to travel at least 50% and be based in East Territory.
• Experience in high-velocity, high-volume selling environments.
• Strong activity and pipeline discipline across many deals.

Responsibilities

• Own your territory: develop the plan, identify likely movers, and justify the moves.
• Generate pipeline through outbound activity, events, and partners.
• Qualify quickly to focus time on deals that will close.
• Lead full-cycle deals: discovery, proposal, procurement, and award.
• Build consensus among decision-makers (agency leadership, city officials, council).
• Sell against incumbents and challengers by articulating Skydio differentiators and displacement plays.
• Collaborate with channel partners and internal teams to drive customer commitments.
• Maintain accurate pipeline forecasting and share insights with leadership.

Skills

Enterprise software sales

Full-cycle deals

Pipeline development

Channel partner sales

AI tools in sales

High-velocity selling

Quota attainment

Travel readiness

Job description

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.

About the Team: Public safety is where drone technology faces the highest stakes. Agencies across the country are standing up Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs that put an aircraft over an emergency within seconds of a call. As drone programs move from the age of tools to the age of infrastructure, we are expanding our public safety sales team to meet that demand.

About the role: As a Key Account Leader, Small City at Skydio, you will own a territory of our highest-volume public safety segment, agencies with 1 to 40 sworn personnel. This is a full-cycle, quota-carrying role: you find the opportunities, run the deals, and close them. Your number is yours, and so is the territory plan behind it.

You will be the person an agency trusts with one of the most visible programs it will stand up this decade. That means understanding how the agency actually works, who has to say yes, and what it will take to get there, then running a process that gets the program funded, approved, and deployed. You will report to the Key Account Director, Small City, and work alongside Sales Engineering, Business Development, Channel, Marketing, Strategic Relationships, Government Relations, and Mission Success.

What makes this segment distinct is scale. You will have more agencies in your territory than most sellers see in a career, and many deals in flight at once. The job rewards activity discipline, fast qualification, and a process you run the same way every time. Some small-city agencies are the leading edge of something larger, and spotting them early and routing them to our Mid-City and T1200 teams is part of the job.

We sell autonomous flying robots and the artificial intelligence that powers them. Every seller here uses AI tools as a normal part of running a territory: researching agencies, preparing for meetings, responding to RFPs, and analyzing pipeline. We expect you to as well.

This is a highly competitive market, and much of the work happens alongside our channel. You will sell against incumbent platforms and well-funded challengers, and win on the merits.

Location: Remote, Eastern U.S.

How we work

These are the standards we hire to, and they describe how the best people on this team already work.

High integrity. Public safety is a tight-knit community. Chiefs and Sheriffs talk to each other, and a reputation for straight answers travels fast. We sell what the ecosystem is actually capable of, we are clear about where the product is today and where it's headed, and we win on our own merits. There's no compromise here.

Sales is a team sport. One team. No lone wolves. Deals are won by account leaders, sales engineering, business development, channel, marketing, strategic relationships, government relations, and mission success pulling in the same direction, and our partners are part of that team, not a channel to be managed around. The best people here care more about the collective number than their own slice of it.

Great conversationalists. This is the craft of the job: asking better questions than anyone else in the room, listening for what a chief or sheriff isn't saying, real curiosity about how an agency operates. Not polish, not a rehearsed pitch. Trust in this market is built one honest conversation at a time, and it is the thing competitors cannot copy.

Curious, and fluent with the tools. Everyone on this team uses AI as a normal part of their work: researching agencies, preparing for meetings, analyzing pipeline, drafting and then editing. That takes taste more than technical skill: knowing what a quality result looks like, describing a problem precisely enough to get it, and catching the tool when it is confidently wrong. The same muscle makes a great seller. Discovery is specifying the problem; qualification is checking the output. We hire people who are curious about how things work, whether that's an agency's budget, a council's politics, or the aircraft's autonomy, and who have spent the last two years embracing AI rather than waiting to be told to use it.

How you'll make an impact

Build pipeline

Own your territory plan: know the agencies in it, which are likely to move this year, and why

Generate your own pipeline through outbound, events, and partners rather than waiting on inbound demand

Get in early and shape the criteria the agency will use to make its decision

Work a high volume of agencies at once, and qualify fast enough that your time goes to the ones that will move

Win

Run full-cycle deals from first conversation to award: discovery, demonstration, proof of value, proposal, procurement, and approval

Qualify with MEDDPICC rigor, and walk away from deals that are not real

Build consensus across the people who have to say yes: the chief or sheriff, the city or town manager, and the council or commission

Sell against incumbents and challengers: frame Skydio's unique differentiators, run displacement plays, and defend accounts under attack

Partner

Sell with and through channel partners, and structure deals that get customers to yes

Bring in Sales Engineering, Business Development, Government Relations, and Mission Success at the right moment, and keep them pointed at the same outcome

Hand off cleanly to Mission Success after award and stay close enough to the account to grow it

Forecast honestly and keep your pipeline clean enough that your Director can trust it

Use AI tools daily for agency research, call prep, RFP response, and pipeline analysis, and never let anything AI-drafted reach a customer unreviewed

Bring what you hear in the field back to the team: competitive intelligence, product gaps, and what is changing in how agencies buy

Know your own funnel metrics (conversion, cycle time, stage velocity) and use them to decide where your week goes

What makes you a good fit

Required

• 2+ years carrying an individual quota in enterprise software, hardware, or SaaS sales, with attainment you can state year by year, including the year you missed and what you changed
• Personal success running full-cycle, multi-stakeholder deals from first conversation to signed contract
• A record of building your own pipeline, and a clear view of how much of your closed business you sourced
• Disciplined qualification and a forecast your manager could trust
• Fluency selling with and through channel partners
• Daily, systematic use of AI tools in your own work, and at least one workflow, analysis, or tool you built or changed in the last two years that made you measurably better (we will ask you to show it, not describe it)
• Presence with agency leadership and high personal integrity under quota pressure
• Ability to travel at least 50% of the time, and based in East Territory
• Personal success in a high-velocity, high-volume selling environment
• Strong activity and pipeline discipline across many deals at once

Preferred

• Experience in public safety, specifically law enforcement, fire, or emergency management
• Experience selling into SLED customers, with working knowledge of procurement vehicles and budget and grant cycles
• Experience in a high-volume transactional motion
• You have built something with AI that other people use, whether a research tool, an analysis, or a workflow, and you can talk about what the first version got wrong
• Curiosity that shows: you can explain how something outside sales works (an agency budget, an airspace waiver, the aircraft's autonomy) in plain language, and you learn fast
• Familiarity with MEDDPICC, Salesforce, Clari, BGov, GovWin, Slack, and Google Workspace
• UAV, robotics, or emerging technology background, and comfort in a fast-moving environment

What to expect from our process

We run a structured process and we tell you what it is. A 30-minute conversation with the hiring manager. A deep dive on your selling record: attainment year by year, how you built pipeline, and the mechanics of deals you won and lost. A working session where you use your own AI tools on a realistic problem from this territory and walk us through your choices. A panel where you run a discovery conversation and walk us through how you would win a deal in this segment. A conversation about how you think. References with people who managed you and worked alongside you. Every interviewer scores independently against the same rubric before we compare notes.

On AI in the process:

draft your resume yourself and refine it with AI if you like; we want your real experience, well expressed. Use whatever tools you want to prepare. Expect to use them in the working session. Leave them off during the conversational interviews so we can see how you think in real time. We use AI to draft job descriptions like this one and to take notes, and a human makes every hiring decision.

Compensation:

At Skydio, our compensation packages for regular, full-time employees include competitive base salaries, equity in the form of stock options, and comprehensive benefits packages. Compensation will vary based on factors, including skill level, proficiencies, transferable knowledge, and experience. Relocation assistance may also be provided for eligible roles. The annual base salary range for this position is $110,000 - $140,000 + Commission*. Fundamentally, we believe that equity is the key to long-term financial growth, and we ensure all regular, full-time employees have the opportunity to significantly benefit from the company's success. Regular, full-time employees are eligible to enroll in the Company’s group health insurance plans. Regular, full-time employees are eligible to receive the following benefits: Paid vacation time, sick leave, holiday pay and 401K savings plan. This position and all associated benefits are subject to applicable federal, state, and local laws, as well as the Company’s policies and eligibility criteria.

*Compensation for certain positions may vary based on the position’s location.

At Skydio we believe that diversity drives innovation. We have created a multidisciplinary environment that embraces the power of diverse perspectives to create elegant solutions for complex problems. We are committed to growing our network of people, programs, and resources to nurture an inclusive culture.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local anti-discrimination laws.

For positions located in the United States of America, Skydio, Inc. uses E-Verify to confirm employment eligibility. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, please visit https://www.e-verify.gov/

U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY INFORMATION

(Completion is voluntary and will not subject you to adverse treatment)

Skydio provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

Skydio is a federal contractor or subcontractor subject to certain governmental recordkeeping and reporting requirements for the administration of civil rights laws and regulations. Employment decisions are made on the basis of job-related criteria without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, age, genetic information, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

We invite all applicants to voluntarily self-identify their race, ethnicity, and gender. Submission of the information on this form is strictly voluntary and refusal to provide it will not subject you to any adverse treatment. Information obtained will be retained in a confidential file and separate from personnel records. This information may only be used in accordance with the provision of applicable federal laws, executive orders, and regulations. If you want more information about any of the sections, please check with a company representative.

Male

Female

Decline to self-identify

• Hispanic or Latino - A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.
• White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.
• Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.
• Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.
• American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment.
• Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) - All persons who identify with more than one of the above five races.

SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF VETERAN STATUS

Skydio is a Government contractor subject to Section 4212 of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974, as amended by the Jobs for Veterans Act of 2002, which requires Government contractors to take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment protected veterans. If you believe that you belong to any of the following categories of protected veterans, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.

Disabled veteran – A veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military and is entitled to disability compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to disability compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, or was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability

Recently separated veteran – A veteran separated during the three-year period beginning on the date of the veteran's discharge or release from active duty in U.S military, ground, naval, or air service

Active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran – A veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge was authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense

Armed forces service medal veteran – A veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985 (61 Fed. Reg. 1209).

I identify as one or more of the classifications of protected veteran listed above

I am not a protected veteran

I decline to self-identify for protected veteran status