Key Account Director (Campus)
Posted Updated
Description
- As a Key Account Director, Campus at Skydio, you will lead a national team of Key Account Leaders selling into large universities and colleges with dedicated police departments. This is a first-line leadership role, and the job comes down to three things: recruiting the right people, coaching them into great sellers, and keeping them here
- You will not carry your own accounts. Your number is your team’s number, and you will hit it by making each person on the team better: sharpening deal strategy, getting into the field on their most competitive pursuits, and building the territory, pipeline, and forecast discipline that makes a segment predictable
- You will work alongside peer Directors leading other segments and geographies, and across Channel, Sales Engineering, Business Development, Marketing, Strategic Relationships, Government Relations, and Mission Success
- You will run Skydio’s public safety playbook, with real autonomy to adapt it where campus is different: a wider buying committee, an academic calendar that dictates when budget moves, and a community that scrutinizes surveillance more closely than most. Knowing which differences warrant a different play is a meaningful part of the job
- You will also set the standard for how the team works, not only what it sells. 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, and you will model that, coach to it, and hire for it
- This is a highly competitive market, and much of the work happens alongside our channel. Your team will sell against incumbent platforms and well-funded challengers, and you will set the standard for how they win
- Own hiring for your segment: build a continuous talent pipeline, run a fast and rigorous process, and personally close the candidates you want
- Hire to the bar above: integrity, team instinct, conversational craft, and fluency with the tools matter as much as a closed-won history
- Screen for evidence, not adjectives: attainment stated year by year with the misses included, deal stories with the mechanics of how the customer bought, and something the candidate has built or changed in how they work in the last two years
- Run a structured process: the same core questions for every candidate, a live working session, independent scoring, and a debrief that decides on evidence
- Onboard and ramp new Key Account Leaders with a clear path from first day to first award, and hold the ramp accountable
- Run 1:1s and deal reviews that build judgment rather than just inspect pipeline
- Get in the field: join demos, customer meetings, and executive conversations, then debrief with specific, usable feedback
- Coach the competitive game: POV strategy, shaping requirements early, framing Skydio’s unique differentiators, displacement plays, and defending accounts under attack
- Build MEDDPICC rigor, channel fluency, and forecast honesty into how the team works, not just what they report
- Raise the team’s fluency with AI tools: build shared workflows for customer research, call prep, RFP response, and pipeline analysis, and hold the line that nothing AI-drafted reaches a customer unreviewed
- Coach the institutional sale: getting past the chief to the vice president, general counsel, and risk, and building a case that survives a procurement office and a skeptical campus community
- Build a team that people don’t want to leave: clear expectations, real development paths, and recognition that lands
- Own territory and quota design so assignments are achievable, equitable, and worth staying for
- Have honest career conversations early, address disengagement before it becomes a resignation, and be the escalation path your team trusts to clear obstacles
- Own the segment number: pipeline coverage, forecast accuracy, linearity across the quarter, and the analysis behind them
- Partner with Channel on partner strategy, joint planning, and the deal structures that get customers to yes
- Act as executive sponsor on your team’s largest and most competitive pursuits: present in the room, without taking the deal over
- Represent your segment’s customer insight, competitive intelligence, and product gaps to Marketing and Product
- Tailor the playbook where campus warrants and plan around an academic calendar that concentrates budget and urgency into specific windows
- Partner with Channel on cooperative and system-wide contract vehicles
- Experience with higher education or other institutional customers
- 2+ years leading quota-carrying sellers as a first-line manager, with team attainment you can state year by year, including the year you missed and what you changed
- Fluency selling with and through channel partners
- 4+ years total in enterprise software, hardware, or SaaS sales, including personal success closing complex, multi-stakeholder deals
- Strong voluntary retention history, a record of developing people into larger roles, and the judgment to move quickly when someone isn’t right for the seat
- A coaching approach you can articulate, with specific examples of people who got measurably better working for you
- Demonstrated success recruiting sellers: a real network, a clear point of view on what good looks like, a structured process you can describe, and the ability to close candidates
- Good judgment about when to run the standard play and when a segment nuance calls for something different
- 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 or your team measurably better (we will ask you to show it, not describe it)
- Executive presence with both customer leadership and your own team, and high personal integrity under quota pressure
- Obtaining FAA Part 107 certification within the first 60 days of employment is strongly encouraged for all Skydio employees and required for certain positions
- Ability to travel at least 50% of the time, and based in United States
- Experience selling or leading teams into SLED customers, with working knowledge of procurement vehicles and budget and grant cycles
- Experience in higher education, or in public safety, specifically law enforcement, fire, or emergency management
- Experience building a team from a small base rather than inheriting a mature one
- You have built something with AI that other people use, whether a research tool, an analysis, or a team 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