Manager, Systems Engineering Specialist - Palo Alto Networks

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

Your Career

As the Solution Architects (SA) Manager for Prisma Cloud, you will lead an SA organization that’s composed of industry-leading technical experts who are instrumental in helping our customers architect, scope and realize their cloud security transformation. Your close business partner will be the District Sales Manager for Prisma Cloud.

Along with your team, you will build close and influential relationships with your customers and prospects to help them securely deploy applications, containerized and serverless workloads across Public Cloud Service Providers and also within their own Private Cloud infrastructure. You will use your expertise to guide and mentor your team of field SAs to keep them on the leading edge of cloud security architecture and ahead of the latest cyber threats.

We are looking for a leader to develop our field cloud security SAs to become domain experts on cloud security and proficient on competitive products so they can effectively position Prisma Cloud to our customers in a differentiated way that leads to customer wins. You will coach your team to deliver compelling Proof of Value/Concepts that clearly showcase the strength of Prisma Cloud. As a leader, you will closely monitor all PoVs/PoCs to assure they are successful within the shortest possible time.

As an SA leader, you will provide feedback to your team on an ongoing basis, to help them continuously learn and improve, so they show up as the best version of themselves everyday. Additionally you will provide feedback from the field and from customers to product management on new feature requests and product improvements. 

To drive high adoption of Prisma Cloud, you will work with key stakeholders to ensure customers consume the platform modules based on optimal architectures. You will also coach your team in helping customers engineer and tune their Prisma Cloud solution based on recommendations and best practices.

Your Impact

• Nurture and be the role-model of a positive outlook, can-do attitude and growth mindset, while leading and keeping the SAs motivated in a fast paced and ever changing environment 
• Recruit and retain the best SA talent in the industry
• Coach, mentor, and grow employees on your team, while keeping them engaged and successful in their careers 
• Reinforce technical excellence, hands-on scrappiness, and a customer first culture
• Help define and continuously influence the training curriculum so the content is relevant and up-to-date as possible
• Help preserve our dynamic “start-up” energy as we scale
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of leading products in the market and position Prisma Cloud as a differentiated offering
• Be an active part of the selling process
• Be an influential thought leader at all levels at the customer, especially at the CxO and CISO levels
• Build and maintain relationships with key customers to solidify reference accounts and  to assist the account teams with defining plans to drive more business
• Provide effective technical leadership in customer interactions to include sharing security trends and standard methodologies employed by the best customers in the industry
• Steer conversations about industry trends and emerging changes on the security landscape that every customer needs to plan for
• Lead and support the team in complex evaluations, problem solving and challenging customer environments
• Ownership and accountability of advanced 'proof of value' testing in strategic accounts
• Provide design consultation and standard methodology mentorship for rollout, implementation, and policy conversion during the 'pre-sales' process for strategic opportunities
• Champion the voice of our users and customers to influence product direction and feature priorities
• Be a player-manager, to fill in for existing team members if there is a resource conflict, or vacation coverage challenge
• Act as an escalation point for pre-sales and post sales technical issues that arise 

Your Experience

• 2+ years experience as a pre-sales Solutions Manager
• 6+ years as a Senior Solutions Architect, Principal or Consulting Engineering
• Industry knowledge of security product market trends and directional awareness of our roadmap and technology development efforts, knowledge of competitor offerings and products 
• Domain expertise in the areas of public cloud architectures, cloud native security models, CI/CD, DevOps, firewalls, and other security technologies both from a technology and a business driver standpoint
• Strong communication (written and verbal) and presentation skills
• Quota driven attitude focused on client's best solution by being a trusted advisor
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent military experience required 

The Team

As part of our Systems Engineering team, you’ll support the sales team with technical expertise and guidance when establishing trust with key clients. You won’t find someone at Palo Alto Networks that isn’t committed to your success – with everyone pitching in to assist when it comes to solutions selling, learning, and development. As a member of our systems engineering team, you are motivated by a solutions-focused sales environment and find fulfillment in working with clients to resolve incredible complex cyberthreats.

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $224000 - $308000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at  accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.