Autonomous drone platform for public safety, defense, and infrastructure inspection
Skydio manufactures and operates autonomous drones with embedded AI and computer vision, shipping 55,000+ units to defense, public safety, and utility sectors. The tech stack reveals a dual-layer architecture: enterprise SaaS infrastructure (Salesforce, NetSuite, Palantir Foundry) for contract delivery and customer data, paired with low-level embedded systems (C/C++, STM32, Qualcomm) for autonomous flight. Active projects around MLOps, real-time deep learning inference optimization, and cloud platform development signal a shift from hardware-only toward a managed software/data service—consistent with pain points around telemetry scaling and test automation.
Skydio designs, manufactures, and supports autonomous drone systems from facilities in Hayward, California. The platform serves 1,000+ U.S. public safety agencies, 900+ utility providers, all five branches of the U.S. military, and 26 allied nations, enabling real-time aerial data capture and processing for inspection, emergency response, and infrastructure monitoring. The company operates across three domains: drone hardware (flight control, camera systems, embedded Linux), a cloud backend (AWS, Kubernetes, Temporal), and enterprise sales infrastructure (Salesforce CPQ, Conga CLM, NetSuite) for multi-year government and commercial contracts. Engineering represents ~50% of headcount, with steady hiring across embedded systems, computer vision, MLOps, and supply-chain optimization.
Skydio uses C/C++ and STM32 for embedded flight control, Python and PySpark for data pipelines, React and TypeScript for cloud UI, Palantir Foundry for data ops, AWS and Kubernetes for infrastructure, Temporal for workflow orchestration, and Salesforce/NetSuite for enterprise sales and operations.
Active product work includes Skydio Cloud (managed platform), MLOps workflows for embedded model deployment, 3D mission and mapping interfaces, real-time computer vision inference optimization, and automated test suites for mobile control systems. Projects focus on scaling data infrastructure and reducing latency on edge hardware.
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