Staff Software Engineer - Streaming Infrastructure

San Mateo, CA

About the role

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 to first responders, soldiers in battlefield scenarios, and beyond.

About the team

The Streaming team builds and operates the systems that move live video, telemetry, and control data between Skydio drones and our cloud platform. These systems support customers and internal teams across growing fleets, including devices operating over limited or unreliable networks. We work closely with device, networking, cloud infrastructure, security, and product teams to keep real-time communication reliable and responsive when it matters most.

About the role

As a Staff Infrastructure Engineer on the Streaming team, you will shape the cloud infrastructure and operational foundations behind Skydio’s real-time streaming platform. You will work across Kubernetes, networking, deployment systems, and production services to improve reliability, performance, security, and efficiency.

This is a hybrid software and infrastructure role with the freedom to work across the stack, including making changes to application code to address underlying problems. You will define technical direction and lead cross-team initiatives that help our streaming platform scale with customer demand. Our backend services are primarily written in Go, with some Python and C++.

How you will make an impact

Design and evolve Kubernetes infrastructure for real-time services, driving capacity planning and compute and bandwidth efficiency as concurrent streaming demand grows.
Improve deployment, scaling, and recovery workflows to minimize disruption to active streams.
Establish service-level objectives and observability for stream availability, connection success, and latency; investigate failures across application code, Linux networking, and cloud infrastructure to prevent recurrence.
Partner with device, networking, and product engineers to diagnose failures across the device-to-cloud path and enable new real-time capabilities.
Work with security engineers to strengthen the practices and controls that protect customer data, drones, and streaming services.

What makes you a good fit

8+ years in SRE, platform engineering, DevOps, or an equivalent infrastructure role, with demonstrated ability to define technical direction, lead cross-team initiatives, and translate business objectives into a technical roadmap.
Strong experience operating and automating production Kubernetes clusters, with familiarity with AWS and continuous deployment systems, including safe rollout and rollback strategies.
Experience operating distributed systems with long-lived connections, latency-sensitive traffic, or demanding availability requirements, and comfort fixing underlying issues in application code; Go preferred.
Strong understanding of cloud networking, security, storage, and resilient application topologies, with experience diagnosing connectivity and performance issues across application, container, and cloud networking layers.
Experience building observability and using production metrics, logs, traces, and profiling to investigate failures.

Bonus points

Experience operating real-time video, communications, or device connectivity platforms, including drones or highly automated physical hardware.
Familiarity with WebRTC, RTP/RTCP, ICE/STUN/TURN, or platforms such as LiveKit.
Experience troubleshooting connectivity and performance issues in real-time streaming systems, including packet loss, jitter, latency, and NAT/firewall traversal.
Experience scaling connection-oriented services, including connection draining and graceful shutdown.
Familiarity with supporting both SaaS and self-hosted applications.

Additional requirements

Obtaining FAA Part 107 certification within the first 60 days of employment is strongly encouraged for all Skydio employees and required for certain positions.

This position requires access to export-controlled technical data, restricted government information, and/or information systems subject to U.S. government security and access-control requirements. Employment in this role is contingent upon verification of U.S. person status and the ability to access controlled or restricted information as required for the position.

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.

*Compensation for certain positions may vary based on the position's location.

#LI-WA1

At Skydio we believe that diversity drives innovation. We have created a multidisciplinary environment that embraces the power of diverse perspectives to create elegant solutions for complex problems. We are committed to growing our network of people, programs, and resources to nurture an inclusive culture.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local anti-discrimination laws.

For positions located in the United States of America, Skydio, Inc. uses E-Verify to confirm employment eligibility. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, please visit https://www.e-verify.gov/

About Skydio

Skydio is a drone manufacturer that uses artificial intelligence to create flying drones that are used by consumers, enterprises, and government customers.

It develops AI-powered drones to deliver the power and flying cameras without the complexity. The company's drones use an array of cameras and proprietary computer vision technology to recognize, avoid objects in real-time, and predict into the future to make intelligent decisions, enabling users by flying themselves through the most demanding tasks or keeping them safe from obstacles when they want to take control. The company's debut drone, the R1, could track a target and film them while avoiding obstacles without any human intervention required. Then the company released the Skydio 2 in 2019, its second drone, cutting off more than half the price while improving its autonomous tracking and video capabilities. Its flagship product, the X2, is equipped with seven cameras, 100x zoom, night vision, and promises to turn ordinary users into expert pilots thanks to its self-piloting abilities. It is backed by top investors and strategic partners including Andreessen Horowitz, Linse Capital, Next47, IVP, Playground, NVIDIA, and UP.Partners.