Skydio

What Skydio does

Skydio builds autonomous drones for defense, public safety and infrastructure inspection, headquartered in San Mateo, California. The X10 platform launched in September 2023, and the military X10D was added to the US Department of Defense Blue UAS Cleared list on May 30, 2024 — a top security clearance that is difficult to obtain. In March 2026 the momentum turned into hard orders: the US Army placed a $52M+ order for 2,500 X10D drones, described as the largest small-unmanned-aircraft order. Skydio has expanded from civilian roots into military and infrastructure markets, and among the eight companies profiled it arguably has the most concrete, contract-backed near-term growth runway rather than a purely valuation-driven story.

What it is like to work at Skydio

Skydio's careers messaging emphasizes an enormous amount of passion for the technology it builds and the customers it serves. Hardware, firmware and autonomy roles are on-site in San Mateo, with an additional San Francisco presence. Employee sentiment is middling on balance: Glassdoor shows a 68% recommend rating across 168 reviews, with a 3.1 work-life-balance score. Positive themes center on mission and customer impact — the work goes to real military, public-safety and utility users — while the main negative is work-life balance, which sits below the peer set. Candidates should expect a mission-driven, on-site hardware culture with meaningful real-world stakes, tempered by hours that the reviews suggest can run demanding, especially against defense delivery timelines.

What Skydio pays

Levels.fyi puts Hardware Engineer compensation at a median around $173K, with Software Engineer median around $236K. Posted ranges include Senior Hardware Test & Reliability at $170K–$226K and Autonomy Software Engineer at $147K–$210K, with a Senior Data Platform role posted at $180K–$240K. The pay transparency on listings is honest and specific, but the overall range is tighter than the software-AI peer set — this is drone-hardware and autonomy compensation, not $300K–$700K AI-lab territory. Candidates optimizing purely for top-of-market comp will find the ceilings lower here, while those who value concrete mission and defense-grade product work will find the bands fair and clearly posted.

How hiring works at Skydio

Skydio does not publish a single formal interview guide, but its senior hardware postings set the bar clearly. Because drones are a tightly coupled hardware-plus-firmware product, senior hardware roles such as Test & Reliability signal expectations around embedded, real-time and reliability engineering, and autonomy roles emphasize sensor fusion, vision pipelines and real-time systems. The bar is high given defense customers and stringent safety requirements, so candidates should be ready to demonstrate embedded-systems and autonomy depth rather than prepare for a generic software loop. Concrete experience with real-time constraints, sensor integration and robotics fundamentals maps most directly onto what Skydio screens for.

Growth & trajectory

Skydio announced a $3.5B US manufacturing expansion on April 27, 2026, with more than 2,000 new jobs and over $1B directed to domestic suppliers, having already shipped 60,000+ drones to 3,800+ customers. Its customer base spans every branch of the US military, 29 allied nations, more than 1,200 public safety agencies, and over 450 utility and energy companies. Combined with the $52M+ Army order, this is the most concrete near-term manufacturing and headcount growth story of the eight companies profiled. For candidates, the runway is unusually tangible: real orders, a named domestic build-out, and thousands of planned jobs, rather than growth premised on a future funding round or unproven product.

Risks to know

Skydio operates under defense-prime engineering rigor — DoD security and Blue UAS Cleared requirements — which constrains process, pace and how work gets done. Its compensation range is tighter than the software-AI peer set, and its 3.1 work-life-balance rating is below other entries in this set. Crucially, funding and demand are tied to defense and regulatory cycles, so while the growth runway is concrete, it is exposed to government-budget timing and procurement decisions rather than pure commercial demand. Candidates should weigh the stability of contract-backed defense revenue against the constraints and cyclicality that come with building for government and public-safety customers.

Who thrives at Skydio (and who should not)

Thrives: software, firmware and autonomy engineers with real-time or robotics backgrounds who are comfortable in a defense-products environment and motivated by mission and customer impact. Unlike pure-software AI, this is on-site drone hardware involving flight-testing, embedded work and DoD-grade requirements, so hands-on lab and field work is part of the role. Should not apply: candidates seeking software-AI comp in the $300K–$700K band at the senior level, or engineers who want a fast-moving, low-process culture rather than defense-grade rigor and safety gating — the clearance requirements and reliability standards deliberately slow things down in ways that suit some engineers and frustrate others.

Roles Skydio is hiring for

The roles Skydio is most actively hiring right now in our index, with a live count and the salary guide for each:

The full board of open roles — with comp and location on every posting — is at the top of this page.

The signals behind this page

The hiring picture here is read from 83 live Skydio postings in our index (refreshed weekly); 100% are remote-friendly, and in a recent sample 57 disclose a pay-transparency band. The culture, growth, and interview detail above is researched and cited; the open-roles board is live from our jobs index.

Sources

• U.S. Army Places $52M+ Order for Skydio X10D (Mar 2026)
• Skydio announces $3.5B U.S. manufacturing expansion — The Drone Girl (Apr 27, 2026)
• X10D added to DoD Blue UAS Cleared list (May 30, 2024)
• Skydio Hardware Engineer Salary — Levels.fyi
• Skydio Software Engineer Salary — Levels.fyi
• Skydio Reviews (culture, ratings) — Glassdoor
• Senior Hardware Test and Reliability Engineer (posting) — Skydio