Sales Director - Emerging Markets

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

Emerging Markets is where Skydio finds its next big industries. The team sells into manufacturing, architecture, engineering and construction, oil and gas, telecom and digital infrastructure, mining, agriculture, and waste. These are thousands of large enterprises running sprawling physical sites, and many of them score as strong fits for autonomous docks. Skydio has already landed some of the largest drone programs in these industries. The opportunity now is to turn those wins into repeatable plays, industry by industry.

About the role

Sales Director, Emerging Markets, you will build and lead the team: four Account Executives on the largest enterprises, two of them new seats you will hire, including a dedicated Energy Sector role. Two BDRs support the team on net-new land deals. You will be in the seat before your new sellers, so you will shape the team, the territories, and the playbook from the start. This business is planned to nearly double next year and keep growing quickly as the team scales.

This role keeps the development mandate for Commercial Sales. You will work out which industries and use cases are ready for docks, prove them with flagship customers, and hand the team a repeatable motion. The best deals here stack use cases on one site: asset inspection, progress monitoring, EHS, emergency response, and security. Your team will find the first use case, land it, and expand from there. When an industry is ready to stand on its own, it graduates into its own team, the way Site Security did this year. Oil and gas is next.

You will work alongside peer leaders in Utilities and Site Security, and closely with Solutions Engineering, Partnerships, Customer Success, Deployment, Product, and Marketing. We sell autonomous flying robots and the AI that powers them, and every seller here uses AI tools as a normal part of running a territory. You will model that, coach to it, and hire for it.

Location: Remote, US

How we work

High integrity. Industrial buyers are practical and skeptical, and a reputation for straight answers travels fast. 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 programs are won by account leaders, solutions engineering, partners, customer success, and deployment 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 plant manager or an EHS director isn't saying. Be curious about how a refinery, a factory, or a jobsite actually runs. Trust 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

• Hire the two new Account Executives, including a dedicated Energy Sector role, and build a continuous talent pipeline as the team grows

• 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

• Onboard and ramp new sellers so they start with a book, relationships, and identified opportunities, not an empty list

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 industrial enterprise sale: finding the operational pain, proving value in a pilot, and turning one site into a multi-site program

• Coach use case stacking: expanding from the first use case into inspection, EHS, progress monitoring, and security on the same docks

• 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 Emerging Markets business

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

• Decide where the team plays: use account scoring and win data to focus on the industries where docks fit best, starting with oil and gas, AEC, and manufacturing

• Build industry playbooks from flagship wins so every new seller can repeat them

• Route accounts cleanly: hand site security pursuits to the Security team and smaller companies to Inside Sales, and work with Partnerships where a partner extends reach

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

• Bring customer insight, competitive intelligence, and product gaps back to Product and Marketing

What makes you a good fit

Required

• 2+ 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-site deals with large industrial enterprises

• Experience selling into industrial markets such as oil and gas, manufacturing, AEC, mining, or telecom, to operations, asset management, EHS, or engineering leaders

• A record of opening new markets or verticals: finding the first customers, proving the use case, and building a repeatable play

• Experience building a team from a small base, including hiring the first sellers

• 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 customer leadership and with your own team, and high personal integrity under quota pressure

• Ability to travel at least 50% of the time

Preferred

• Background in UAS, robotics, industrial IoT, inspection technology, or other emerging technology

• Operations, engineering, or EHS experience in an industrial setting

• Relationships across oil and gas, manufacturing, or AEC

• Fluency selling with and through channel partners

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

• Curiosity that shows: you can explain how something outside sales works (a refinery turnaround, a construction progress report, 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 industrial account problem and walk us through your choices. A panel on the market and how you would build 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 - $240,000 + 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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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/