Skyports launches employee recruitment drive for drone delivery and service operations

Skyports Drone Services, a unit of UAV delivery operator and vertiport design group Skyports, is launching a campaign to train and employ workers to staff its rapidly growing activities across the globe, offering applicants an entry into what is looking to be one of the most promising growth sectors in coming decades.

Skyports says it will be basing its drone services Hub Operator Programme in its UK domestic market, as well as with its unit in Singapore. In addition to training postulants to handle the various aspects of its existing UAV activities in international facilities, the homegrown workforce will also be deployed abroad to help launch and scale operations added in current and future business expansion plans.

Read: Skyports in cargo drone delivery infrastructure deal with Singapore’s Jurong Port 

Indeed, flexibility and a willingness to travel are among the most important requisites for participants in the scheme. Once they’ve undergone a brief training phase and have been approved for work, recruits must make themselves available for trips to Skyports’ international sites for at least three months of the year. Duration of each of those assignments – which may be spread across a given year – will range from one to eight weeks.

By way of example, Skyports says a first wave of Hub Operator Programme employees will be dispatched to Colombia for two- or three-week stints in the second quarter of this year to prepare the company’s launch of drone delivery service there. Other likely destinations in the coming months, it notes, will include Skyports UAV stations in the UK, South Korea, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates.

Apart from a willingness to learn how to set up and operate delivery drone hubs wherever that work needs to be done, Skyports sets virtually no other requirements to apply – including experience with UAVs. Employees issuing from the program will have all expenses paid during their deployments, and receive a wage of just under $16 per hour. Those interested in eventually shifting to permanent roles in the company as remote pilots will have that opportunity as well.

Read: Scotland’s medical drone network opens phase two development 

Skyports says the main responsibilities of people who move from the training phase to active drone delivery operations will be:

• You will travel with our team of highly skilled remote pilots around the world to help them execute on drone operations.
• You will be involved in Hub setup and management to enable the smooth running of aircraft arrivals and departures.
• You will execute on key checklists required for the safe operation of Skyports’ drones, including maintenance and inspection.
• You will provide and maintain situational awareness to the Pilot in Command during operations through written and verbal communication.

Alex Brown, the director of Skyports Drone Services, said the company’s launch of a major employee recruitment and training program is a direct result of surging demand of UAV delivery and other operations outstripping the reserve of workers needed to staff those activities around the world.

“Demand for drone operations has skyrocketed in the last 18 months, and we’re busier than ever with our delivery, survey, and monitoring services,” says Brown. “Workforce development is a critical, but often forgotten, consideration in the growth of a new industry. With the Hub Operator Programme, we hope to future proof our operations and inspire more people to join this exciting, rapidly growing industry… (and) enable us to achieve the ambitions we have set for ourselves in the year ahead.”