Senior Engineering Manager, Middleware

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 https://www.skydio.com/solutions/energy-and-utilities to first responders https://www.skydio.com/solutions/public-safety, soldiers in battlefield scenarios https://www.skydio.com/solutions/national-security/tactical-isr, and beyond https://www.skydio.com/solutions.

About the Role:

At Skydio, the combination of our platform, technology foundation, and team enables our engineers and researchers to develop, deploy, iterate, and improve upon the state of the art in robot autonomy better and faster than anywhere else in the world.

The middleware team sits in between the hardware platform and the autonomy stack and develops abstractions that are used by many of the layers that are higher up in the stack, including customer facing features. The team is small but with a broad impact: we design on-device services for all our drone platforms (X10, R10, F10) and their hardware configurations (Dock, External Radio and Controllers).

Some of the features that we work on are:

- Over The Air Updates

- Inter Process Communication

- Media and Log Management

- Performance of code and systems on the aircraft

- Time Synchronization

- Aircraft Attachments

- Navigation Cameras Streaming Pipeline

- Automated Test Infrastructure

This is a highly impactful team where ownership matters. We work closely with other engineers across the company including Computer Vision, State Estimation, Fleet Management, and Embedded.

We're looking for a hands-on manager — someone who leads a small team, stays close to the code, and is as comfortable in a design review as in a career conversation.

How You’ll Make an Impact:

- Lead, grow, and retain a team of software engineers — running 1:1s, setting expectations, giving direct feedback, and developing engineers at every level.

- Own the team's roadmap and delivery: set technical direction, break down ambiguous problems, and make the tradeoffs that keep the team shipping reliably.

- Stay hands-on. Design and implement high-quality software systems that run on our hardware products and developer workstations, and remain a credible technical voice in reviews and architecture decisions.

- Build analytics tools that help us monitor services and identify, architect, and implement projects that ensure smooth customer experiences, operating at a high state of reliability.

- Identify and lead internal cross-team software projects that substantially improve the customer (internal and external) experience.

- Take ownership of internal services from concept through deployment and monitoring.

- Partner with Computer Vision, State Estimation, Fleet Management, Embedded and Product teams to align priorities and unblock work across organizational boundaries.

- Recruit and hire — build the interview loop, sell candidates on the mission, and raise the bar with every addition to the team.

What Makes You a Good Fit:

- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.

- 3+ years of direct people management experience — you've owned headcount, performance, and career growth for a team of engineers.

- You're a hands-on manager. You still read and write code, and you'd be uncomfortable leading a team whose work you couldn't do yourself.

- You are comfortable navigating and delivering within a complex codebase.

- You are highly proficient in Python and/or C++, implementing features in a Linux environment.

- You enjoy designing and making powerful tools that are used by other engineers.

- You are excited to work on and with modern cutting-edge robotic systems.

- You are experienced in de …