Sales Director, Utilities

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:

Utilities are Skydio's largest commercial segment, carrying about 40% of the Commercial plan. The market is concentrated: roughly 225 utilities matter, and the top 75 serve about 85% of U.S. meters. The biggest investor-owned utilities in the country run Skydio X10 fleets and Dock networks for transmission, distribution, and substation inspection, storm response, and asset health. Our largest programs are now five-year, multi-dozen-dock agreements. The market is moving from crews flying handheld drones to autonomous inspection that covers an entire service territory, and this team is leading that shift with tremendous whitespace to drive growth for many years.

About the role

As Sales Director, Utilities, you will lead five quota-carrying sellers: three Strategic Account Managers on the largest utilities and two Enterprise Account Executives on the next tier. Each seller is paired with a dedicated Solutions Engineer. This team carries the largest number in Commercial Sales, and the plan is to grow it substantially on the same headcount before scaling the team further.

This is a land-and-expand business built on deep relationships with a small set of named accounts, not a coverage play. A 100-dock deal takes the same work as a 10-dock deal, and your job is to make the team great at the 100+-dock version. Your number is your team's number. You will hit it by sharpening deal strategy, getting into the field on the biggest pursuits, acting as executive sponsor with utility leadership, and bringing real discipline to pipeline and forecast. Underneath that, the job is still recruiting the right people, coaching them into great sellers, and keeping them here.

Utility deals are won by building alignment up and down the customer's organization. Distribution and transmission directors own day-to-day execution and live with the staffing, repair backlog, and liability that come with finding more defects. Executives are optimizing for reliability, capital allocation, regulatory outcomes, and long-term grid transformation. Our job is to connect those two views, not to go around one to reach the other. You will teach your team to do that well.

You will work alongside peer Sales Directors in Security and Emerging markets, and closely with Solutions Engineering, Customer Success, Deployment, Product, Marketing, and our services partners. We sell autonomous flying robots and the AI that powers them, and every seller here uses AI tools in every aspect of the role. You will model that, coach to it, and hire for it.

How we work

High integrity. The utility operations community is small. Asset managers, line leaders, and UAS program leads move between companies and talk to each other. We sell what the product can do today, we are clear about where it's headed, and we win on our own merits.

Sales is a team sport. No lone wolves. Enterprise utility programs are won by account leaders, solutions engineering, customer success, deployment, product, and partners pulling in the same direction. The best people here care more about the collective number than their own slice of it.

Great conversationalists. Ask better questions than anyone else in the room. Listen for what a distribution director isn't saying. Be curious about how a utility actually runs: its inspection cycles, its capital plan, its regulators. Trust in this market is built one honest conversation at a time.

Curious, and fluent with the tools. Everyone on this team uses AI to research accounts, prepare for meetings, analyze pipeline, and draft and then edit. That takes judgment more than technical skill: knowing what a good result looks like and catching the tool when it is confidently wrong.

How you'll make an impact

Recruit

• Own hiring for the utilities team: build a continuous talent pipeline, run a fast and rigorous process, and personally close the candidates you want

• Hire for integrity, team instinct, conversational skill, and fluency with the tools as much as for a closed-won history

• Screen for evidence: attainment stated year by year with the misses included, and deal stories that explain how the customer actually bought

• Onboard and ramp new sellers with a clear path from first day to first award, and hold the ramp accountable

Coach

• Run 1:1s and deal reviews that build judgment, not just inspect pipeline

• Get in the field: join executive meetings, site walks, and pilot reviews, then give specific, usable feedback

• Coach the enterprise utility sale: shaping a pilot into a program, building the business case for docks across a territory, and navigating sourcing, MSAs, and multi-year agreements

• Coach multi-level selling: earning support from operations leaders while showing executives how Skydio advances reliability, wildfire mitigation, and storm response goals

• Build MEDDPICC rigor and forecast honesty into how the team works: current close dates, current notes, no duplicate or stale opportunities

• Raise the team's fluency with AI: shared workflows for account research, call prep, RFP response, and pipeline analysis, with nothing AI-drafted reaching a customer unreviewed

Retain

• Build a team people don't want to leave: clear expectations, real development paths, and recognition that lands

• Design territories and quotas that are achievable, fair, and worth staying for

• Have honest career conversations early, and be the escalation path your team trusts to clear obstacles

Run the utilities business

• Own the utilities number: pipeline coverage, forecast accuracy, linearity, and the analysis behind them, presented to executive leadership every month

• Expand our largest accounts across operating companies and use cases, from transmission and distribution to substations and emergency response

• Grow program size and term: move customers from pilots to territory-wide dock networks, and toward five-year agreements

• Partner with Solutions Engineering leadership on SE coverage for every seat, and with Inside Sales on smaller utilities and co-ops, with clean routing when an account grows

• Act as executive sponsor on the team's largest pursuits, present in the room without taking the deal over

• Work with Customer Success and Deployment so every signed program turns into flying docks and measurable outcomes, which drive the next expansion

• Bring customer insight, competitive intelligence, and product gaps back to Product and Marketing, including how utilities' own asset and construction data can make autonomous inspection faster to scale

What makes you a good fit

Required

• [3]+ years leading quota-carrying enterprise sellers as a first-line manager, with team attainment you can state year by year, including the year you missed and what you changed

• 7+ years in enterprise sales of hardware, software, or SaaS, with personal success closing complex, multi-stakeholder, multi-year deals in the seven and eight figures

• Experience selling into, or leading teams that sell into, investor-owned utilities. You understand how they buy: operating company structures, sourcing and MSAs, capital versus O&M budgets, and how regulatory commitments shape spending

• A record of land-and-expand selling on a concentrated book of named enterprise accounts, growing programs across business units over multiple years

• A record of building alignment across a customer organization, from field operations leaders to the VP and C-suite

• Demonstrated success recruiting sellers: a real network, a clear view of what good looks like, and the ability to close candidates

• A coaching approach you can describe, with specific examples of people who got measurably better working for you

• Strong retention history and a record of developing people into larger roles

• Daily 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 or your team measurably better (we will ask you to show it)

• Executive presence with utility leadership and with your own team, and high personal integrity under quota pressure

• Ability to travel at least 50% of the time

Preferred

• Utility operations experience: transmission and distribution, line work, asset management, inspection programs, vegetation management, or emergency response

• Background in UAS, robotics, LiDAR, GIS, or asset-management technology sold to utilities

• Relationships across the utility industry, including UAS program leaders and industry groups such as EEI and EPRI

• Experience building a team from a small base, or scaling a team through rapid growth

• Familiarity with MEDDPICC, Salesforce, Clari, Slack, and Google Workspace

• Curiosity that shows: you can explain how something outside sales works (a state inspection cycle, a pole loading model, the aircraft's autonomy) in plain language

What to expect from our process

We run a structured process and tell you what it is. A conversation with the hiring manager. A deep dive on your leadership record: hiring, coaching, retention, and the team number, year by year. A working session where you use your own AI tools on a realistic utility account problem and walk us through your choices. A panel on the utility market and how you would run this team. References with people who worked for you and with you. Every interviewer scores independently against the same rubric before we compare notes.

Draft your resume yourself and refine it with AI if you like. Use whatever tools you want to prepare, and expect to use them in the working session. Leave them off during conversational interviews so we can see how you think in real time. 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 $172,000 - $216,000 + 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.

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