Key Account Director (Majors West · Public Safety)
Posted Updated
Description
- Public safety is where drone technology faces the highest stakes. Agencies across the country are standing up Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs that put an aircraft over an emergency within seconds of a call. As drone programs move from the age of tools to the age of infrastructure, we are expanding our public safety sales team to meet that demand
- As a Key Account Director, Majors, Public Safety at Skydio, you will lead a regional team of Key Account Leaders selling into the largest public safety agencies in the country. 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 region 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 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
- These are the standards we hire to, and as a leader you own them for your region. You set the bar in who you hire, what you coach to, and what you tolerate
- High integrity. Public safety is a tight-knit community. Chiefs and Sheriffs talk to each other, and a reputation for straight answers travels fast. We sell what the ecosystem is actually capable of, we are clear about where the product is today and where it’s headed, and we win on our own merits. There’s no compromise here
- Sales is a team sport. One team. No lone wolves. Deals are won by account leaders, sales engineering, business development, channel, marketing, strategic relationships, government relations, and mission success pulling in the same direction, and our partners are part of that team, not a channel to be managed around. The best people here care more about the collective number than their own slice of it
- Great conversationalists. This is the craft of the job: asking better questions than anyone else in the room, listening for what a chief or sheriff isn’t saying, real curiosity about how an agency operates. Not polish, not a rehearsed pitch. Trust in this market is built one honest conversation at a time, and it is the thing competitors cannot copy
- Curious, and fluent with the tools. Everyone on this team uses AI as a normal part of their work: researching agencies, preparing for meetings, analyzing pipeline, drafting and then editing. That takes taste more than technical skill: knowing what a quality result looks like, describing a problem precisely enough to get it, and catching the tool when it is confidently wrong. The same muscle makes a great seller. Discovery is specifying the problem; qualification is checking the output. We hire people who are curious about how things work, whether that’s an agency’s budget, a council’s politics, or the aircraft’s autonomy, and who have spent the last two years embracing AI rather than waiting to be told to use it
- Own hiring for your region: 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
- 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 region 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 region’s customer insight, competitive intelligence, and product gaps to Marketing and Product
- Familiarity with MEDDPICC, Salesforce, Clari, BGov, GovWin, Slack, and Google Workspace
- Experience building a team from a small base rather than inheriting a mature one
- 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
- Ability to travel at least 50% of the time, and based in West Region
- 4+ years total in enterprise software, hardware, or SaaS sales, including personal success closing complex, multi-stakeholder deals
- A coaching approach you can articulate, with specific examples of people who got measurably better working for you
- Executive presence with both customer leadership and your own team, and high personal integrity under quota pressure
- Experience selling or leading teams into SLED customers, with working knowledge of procurement vehicles and budget and grant cycles
- Fluency selling with and through channel partners
- 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
- UAV, robotics, or emerging technology background, and comfort in a fast-moving environment
- Experience in public safety, specifically law enforcement, fire, or emergency management
- 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)
- 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
- 3+ 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
- 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