Senior Staff Product Manager, Drone Hardware Platforms & Sensors

Skydio Skydio · Defense · San Mateo, CA +1 · R&D

Senior Staff Product Manager for Drone Hardware Platforms & Sensors at Skydio, a leading US drone company. The role involves defining and shaping current and next-gen drone platforms, controllers, cameras, and accessories, focusing on solving problems for enterprise, government, and public safety customers. Requires extensive experience in hardware product development, customer engagement, and collaboration with engineering teams (including AI/ML).

What you'd actually do

  1. Help shape our overall vehicle and hardware strategy in collaboration with our CEO and engineering executives, including the development of new hardware products, including new vehicle form factors.
  2. Engage with customers, prospects, and internal stakeholders to understand core business problems and develop visions and strategies to solve them.
  3. Continually develop, own, and publish product requirement documents and roadmaps for Skydio’s vehicle hardware, controllers, cameras/sensors and embedded software.
  4. Partner with designers and engineering leaders spanning hardware, firmware, computer vision, AI, and machine learning to execute your product vision and requirements.
  5. Capture, document, and distill feedback from customers and prospects to steer product development.

Skills

Required

  • defining and delivering complex hardware products with integrated software
  • technical understanding of IoT or camera/sensors product technologies
  • launching robust hardware products for Enterprise, Public Safety or Defense Customers
  • exceptional written and oral communication skills
  • experience with engineering to participate in technical discussions
  • highly facilitative team player
  • speaking with and learning from customers
  • background in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or computer science
  • ability to obtain FAA Part 107 certification within 60 days of employment start

Nice to have

  • advanced degree or an MBA
  • background experience in utilities, public safety or federal (ISR) workflows
  • expertise in camera interfaces, either in photography, videography, and/or for drone cameras
  • enterprise/professional robotics or drones

What the JD emphasized

  • 9+ years of proven success in defining and delivering complex hardware products with integrated software.
  • Experience launching robust hardware products for Enterprise, Public Safety or Defense Customers.
  • Direct or indirect experience with engineering that allows you to actively participate in deep discussions with engineers on complex technical architecture challenges and tradeoffs.