Principal Architect

Job Description

Your Career

As a Principal Architect at Palo Alto Networks, you are responsible for improving the productivity of our sales teams through the creation and delivery of business-relevant security conversations to our key prospects and customers.  As a thought leader, you will address cybersecurity related issues by leveraging the full Palo Alto Networks portfolio in a way that creates differentiated business value. As a trusted advisor, you will provide valuable insights and education on effective risk reduction, compliance, governance, and cost reduction through a prevention-first security approach based on the Palo Alto Networks security platform.        

The Principal Architect’s value is measured in their ability to increase sales productivity by:

• Compelling communication to gain the trust and buy-in from Vice President and CXO contacts at our largest customers and prospects
• Setting and driving an agenda with the customer or prospect, both directly and with sales teams, and within the market through various engagements, including client workshops and architectural assessments and designs
• Developing and maintaining a deep understanding of competing solutions and architectures and being able to position a Palo Alto Networks approach successfully
• Uncovering new technology applications and use cases and aiding in creating presentations, documents, and deliverables that will illustrate value to prospects and customers and the Palo Alto Networks sales teams
• Uncovering and documenting technological/business value gaps between the Palo Alto Networks Cortex platform and competitive offerings and communicating these to the broader Palo Alto Networks Sales organization
• Becoming a valued resource to Product Management to discover and understand current shortcomings and competitive insights in our product suite and requirements for future strategic market segments
• Playing a role on the EBC team in creating customer messaging that ties the Cortex Portfolio together with the entire Palo Alto Networks Portfolio

The role will require close coordination with the Senior Leadership, Sales, Palo Alto Networks’ CISO and Theater CISO’s, Sales Engineering leadership, Product Management, Marketing, Channel Partners, and the Consulting Engineering team. This is a senior technical customer-facing role, and the value produced must be evident and recurrent. Customers and Sales Teams will ask for you by name.

Your Impact

• In this director-level role, you will lead and direct cross-functional teams within Palo Alto Networks to ensure the highest quality of product and service delivery focused on customer business outcomes
• As a thought leader, you will address customers and prospects security operations challenges and work with them to develop a successful strategy for their organization to implement Palo Alto Networks Cortex technologies in a way that creates differentiated business value
• Engage and establish an advisory relationship with key Manager, Director, VP, and CXO contacts at strategic customers to transform their security strategy
• Engage directly with senior technical and business leaders at key prospects and customers as a security expert to penetrate whitespace accounts and expand Cortex install base through the Identification, qualification, and closure of opportunities
• Work with the sales teams on strategic opportunities for the development and delivery of differentiated proposals which clearly demonstrate the business and technical value of Cortex
• Provide summarized and business-relevant feedback into content, Product Management, Product Marketing, Competitive Marketing, and Field Marketing based on customer engagements to improve Palo Alto Networks effectiveness in communicating its value proposition to prospects and clients
• Engage in continuous self-improvement and learning to maintain technical leadership of relevant technologies (security, data center, public cloud, networking, endpoint, etc.)
• As a trusted advisor, you will provide valuable insights and education on effective risk reduction, compliance, governance, and cost reduction through a prevention-first security approach based on the Palo Alto Networks security platform
• Becoming a valued resource to Product Management to discover and understand current shortcomings and competitive insights in our product suite and requirements for future strategic market segments
• Develop and maintain ongoing executive-level relationships with our largest XSIAM Customers to drive continued platform satisfaction and adoption
• Delivery of targeted CXO-level Threat and Risk Management Briefings by leveraging U42 research and Xpanse ASM Mappings
• Developing and maintaining an executive-level point of view on Cybersecurity trends with a  deep understanding of security operations and the ability to successfully position a Palo Alto Networks approach

Qualifications

Your Experience

• Extensive knowledge of security operations, SIEM, attack surface management, network and endpoint security architectures, history, and trends
• Experience with SIEM, Log Management, XDR/EDR, and security investigation tools commonly used by large customers to run their security programs
• Demonstrable senior level experience in an IT vendor pre-sales or post-sales role - We will also consider applicants that have SIEM deployment expertise in an end user environment
• Demonstrable experience in establishing credibility and strategic messaging with large enterprise customers
• Knowledge of ancillary security areas such as identity management, public and private cloud architectures
• Self-motivated attitude to do whatever is necessary to close deals
• Expect to travel a minimum of 50%+ of the weeks in the fiscal year - This is a global role and will require travel both in theater and internationally - Travel will include customer and Palo Alto Networks location onsite meetings
• Strong communication (written and verbal) and presentation skills, both internally and externally
• Robust problem finding and solving skills, ability to analyze complex multivariate problems, and systematic approach to gain quick resolution, even under duress
• Super organizational skills
• Fluent German and advanced English language skills

Preferences

• Experience working with channel partners and understanding a channel-centric go-to-market approach
• Experience working with companies in the enterprise security space
• End customer background to validate your perspective with customers