Staff Software Engineer

About the role

As a Staff Infrastructure Engineer on the Cloud infrastructure team at Skydio, you will own the reliability and evolution of the core platform that powers autonomous drone operations around the world. You will partner closely with hardware, product, and security teams to ensure the cloud stack meets the stringent demands of real-time drone telemetry, command and control, and inspection workflows. This is a hybrid software and infrastructure role where you will not only scale clusters but also refactor product services when automation alone cannot solve the problem. You will have the freedom to traverse the entire stack, from low-level cluster tuning to high-level application architecture that directly impacts customer outcomes in safety-critical scenarios. The role is built for someone who thrives on ambiguity, takes ownership of cross-functional initiatives, and wants to leave a durable mark on infrastructure, security, and functionality. You will influence long-term platform decisions and help define how Skydio's Kubernetes fleet evolves to support utilities, public safety, defense, and commercial customers globally.

Key facts

Location: USA

Engagement: Full-time

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 $230,000-275,000*. 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.

*For some positions the pay may be dependent upon the individual's regional location.

What you'll do

• Re-architect and maintain the ever growing needs on our Kubernetes fleet and its supporting infrastructure to keep pace with expanding drone mission profiles.
• Continually improve and expand the continuous delivery pipelines that ship platform and product changes safely and rapidly.
• Work in cross-functional teams spanning hardware, cloud, and data to build new capabilities that align with operational realities of drone deployments.
• Work directly with security and compliance stakeholders to harden controls, audit trails, and access management for drone telemetry and customer data.
• Drive cost saving initiatives early into Skydio's product and infrastructure decisions, ensuring efficiency and scalability as fleet utilization grows.
• Diagnose and resolve complex outages in production, applying deep system-level knowledge to minimize customer impact during critical missions.
• Design and implement observability, logging, and alerting strategies that surface actionable insights for both platform and product teams.
• Collaborate with product managers to translate mission requirements into robust infrastructure and software features that support diverse use cases.
• Mentor engineers across the organization on best practices for cloud native development, infrastructure as code, and secure deployment patterns.
• Evaluate and adopt new technologies where they meaningfully improve reliability, performance, or developer experience for drone operations.
• Partner with field teams to understand edge computing constraints and drive platform improvements that reflect real-world deployment conditions.
• Own key service level objectives and service level indicators for the cloud platform, driving accountability and continuous improvement.
• Implement automation that reduces manual toil and enables the business to scale drone operations without proportional headcount growth.
• Contribute to open source and internal tooling that enhances developer productivity and system reliability across the Skydio stack.
• Ensure architectural decisions reflect trade-offs between performance, security, cost, and time to market for critical drone missions.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, Platform Engineer, DevOps or equivalent infrastructure role in fast-paced, production-critical environments.
• Comfortable debugging and automating Kubernetes clusters, including custom resources, operators, and admission controllers.
• Not hesitant to jump into the code to fix the underlying issue, with strong proficiency in Python or Go preferred.
• Prior experience implementing and operating continuous deployment systems in cloud native environments.
• Deep understanding of cloud platforms architecture, including networking, security, storage, and resilient application topologies on AWS or equivalent.
• Demonstrated ability to be delegated business objectives and to seek out solutions independently while owning outcomes.
• Must be a U.S. person able to access export-controlled technical data, restricted government information, and information systems subject to U.S. government security and access-control requirements.
• This position requires U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain the necessary security clearances for access to controlled or restricted information as required for the role.
• Full-time employment is contingent upon successful completion of background checks and verification of eligibility for access to classified or restricted information.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with supporting both SaaS and self-hosted applications in production at scale.
• Prior experience with supporting drones or highly automated physical hardware systems, including edge compute and connectivity constraints.

Practical notes

This role is based in San Mateo, California, and requires in-office presence according to team agreements. Employment terms are full-time, and successful candidates must meet all eligibility, security, and background verification requirements. Travel is generally not expected for this role, and candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship for this position. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role. Deadlines for submission are not specified; interested candidates should apply as soon as possible to be considered.