Telecom Partnerships & Business Development Lead

Skydio; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 285,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits plans

Incentives and stipends

Job summary

Skydio, the US drone company, seeks a technical partnerships manager to lead telecom carrier collaborations at our San Mateo HQ. You will shape connectivity strategy, negotiate with carriers, and enable seamless in-flight data access for customers.

You’ll translate customer needs into carrier requirements, build scalable models, and coordinate with field teams for events, ensuring regulatory readiness and sustainable partnerships.

Qualifications

• Experience translating customer needs into priorities and driving implementation.
• Ability to break down complex projects and communicate steps clearly.
• Strong analytical skills and cross-team communication.
• Technical degree or experience managing complex technical requirements.

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement strategy for engaging with telecom carriers across US, North America, and beyond.
• Understand customers’ needs and negotiate agreements with telecom carriers to enable network access and data connectivity.
• Advocate for in-flight data connectivity with simple, user-friendly options from first drone boot.
• Build business models for in-flight data access and monitor usage and costs to validate them.
• Set regulatory and telecom certification priorities to ensure drone meeting standards.
• Build field relationships between telecom partners and Skydio’s field team for major events.
• Assist Skydio mission success by supporting customers and major incidents.

Skills

Strategic partnerships

Negotiation

Stakeholder management

Analytical skills

Technical background

Education

Engineering or technical degree

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.Our customers depend on our drones to protect lives and serve their communities. Every minute of every day, our drones are dispatched to deliver urgently needed data. Getting that data from the scene to our users depends on having “always on” connectivity. We're seeking a technical partnership manager to spearhead collaborations with leading telecom providers, ensuring that our drones can operate wherever our customers need them to.

Location: This is an office-based position that requires 5 days/week onsite at our HQ in San Mateo, CA.

How you'll make an impact:

• Develop and implement our strategy for engaging with telecom carriers that both deepens our existing relationships and expands our ecosystem to new partners within the US, North America, and internationally over time.
• Understand our customers’ needs and negotiate agreements with telecom carriers that serve those needs by enabling network access, providing sufficient data connectivity, and building sustainable business partnerships.
• Understanding and advocating for our customers in-flight data connectivity by providing simple and easy-to-use connectivity options from the first boot of a drone after it is taken out of the box.
• Build the business models that support in-flight data access, and monitor usage and costs to validate those models in practice.
• Set regulatory and telecom carrier certification priorities to ensure that our drones meet certification standards for both regulators and telecom operators.
• Build field relationships between telecom partners and Skydio’s field team to support major events such as sports games, parades, and other major public gatherings.
• Assist Skydio mission success in supporting customers and major incidents.

What makes you a good fit:

• You have a demonstrated track record of translating customer needs into priorities and driving implementation. This can take many forms, including working with complex implementation projects directly with customers, building products from scratch, or building complex business relationships.
• You face complexity without fear. When given a goal and a complex process with lots of moving parts, you can break down the challenge into meaningful steps, and clearly communicate how each of them moves the ball forward – whether the process is a technical program like device certification, or a business process like negotiating a telecom contract
• You bring strong analytical skills to problems, and once you develop a plan, you can communicate it throughout both Skydio and our partner organizations. Working with multiple complex projects and overlapping deadlines does not scare you.
• You have a technical background, demonstrated by either an engineering or technical degree (such as computer science, telecommunications, or a scientific field), and/or work experience managing complex technical requirements.

Nice-to-haves:

• Prior work at a growth-stage start-up. Skydio is growing fast enough that you’ll need to know when to use an existing rule book, as well as when you should burn the existing rule book and write a new one.
• Interest or experience in wireless communication. You don’t need to be an expert with a patent portfolio, but you will need to be familiar with bit rates, quality of service, and large-scale network operations. If you don’t come in with this knowledge, you just need to demonstrate that you can learn it quickly.
• Experience with telecommunications. We are flexible about what this means. You might have worked directly at a telecom company (AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile), or at one of its major suppliers (like Cisco, Nokia, or Ericsson). What’s important is that you’re interested in carrier network infrastructure and protocols, and how to apply them to new solutions.
• Familiarity or interest in how to apply new 5G features, such as dynamic slicing, high-reliability and low-latency communications, and radio resource management, for airborne devices.

Compensation Range: The annual base salary range for this position is $230,000 - $285,000*. Compensation will vary based on factors, including skill level, proficiencies, transferable knowledge, and experience. In addition to base salary, Skydio full-time employees are eligible to enroll in our benefit plans and take advantage of a variety of incentives and stipends. For some positions the pay may be dependent upon the individual's regional 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/