What are the responsibilities and job description for the Technical Sourcer position at Skyways?
Technical Sourcer
Skyways designs, builds, and operates fully autonomous long-range cargo aircraft. Founded in 2017, the company has spent the last eight years developing and deploying autonomous logistics systems for real-world operations.
Our V2 aircraft carries 30 lbs up to 500 miles, while our next-generation V3 carries 100 lbs over 1,000 miles with 20 hours of endurance. Both use a hybrid-electric architecture that takes off like a helicopter and cruises like a plane, enabling long-range autonomous delivery without traditional runway infrastructure.
Today, Skyways aircraft operate across three continents in controlled national airspace under FAA oversight and in support of U.S. military operations. We are transitioning from prototype development to full-rate production and scaling toward large autonomous cargo fleets.
Backed by Y Combinator and a $37M AFWERX STRATFI award from the U.S. Air Force, Skyways is creating a new form of transportation to advance our civilization from Austin, Texas.
The Opportunity
Skyways is hiring a Technical Sourcer to own top-of-funnel hiring across engineering, manufacturing, autonomy, hardware, robotics, operations, and technical leadership roles.
This role is about judgment, market understanding, and clean execution. You will help define where the right talent sits, find strong candidates, start the conversation, and hand off qualified people into the recruiting process.
Done well, this role directly shapes who joins Skyways. You will give hiring managers better options, help recruiting move faster, and build a clearer picture of the technical talent market as we scale.
What You'll Do:
- Build market maps for priority technical roles
- Source candidates across aerospace, autonomy, robotics, manufacturing, hardware, defense, and startup environments
- Create and maintain searches in LinkedIn Recruiter and other sourcing tools
- Run outbound outreach through LinkedIn, email, referrals, and targeted research
- Lightly qualify candidates against role-specific rubrics
- Partner with recruiting and hiring managers to define what “qualified” means for each role
- Keep Lever clean with accurate stages, notes, responses, and follow-ups
- Hand off qualified, interested candidates with clear context
- Surface market signal around comp, titles, location, availability, and talent density
- Help improve sourcing process, outreach quality, and pipeline visibility
What You'll Bring:
- Proven technical sourcing experience for hard-to-fill roles in hardware, robotics, or adjacent deep-tech and physical-engineering domains (aerospace, defense, autonomy, or advanced manufacturing)
- Ability to understand technical requirements and separate signal from noise
- Strong search discipline, including Boolean, LinkedIn Recruiter, and creative sourcing paths
- Clear, concise written communication
- Good judgment on candidate fit, motivation, and relevance
- Strong follow-through and pipeline hygiene
- Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment with changing priorities
- Ownership mindset and the ability to work with limited structure
Bonus Points:
- Experience sourcing for aerospace, UAVs, robotics, autonomy, manufacturing, defense, or hardware teams
- Experience with Lever
- Experience supporting startup or high-growth technical hiring
- Familiarity with mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, flight test, production, or embedded systems roles
- Experience building referral maps or talent intelligence projects
Want to join our mission? Apply to learn more!
Due to U.S. government contract requirements, this role is limited to U.S. citizens, U.S. permanent residents, or candidates from specific countries authorized under applicable export control regulations.
Skyways is an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other factor protected by applicable local, state or federal laws.