Palo Alto Networks – Principal Solutions Architect, SASE/ Zero Trust

As a Principal Solutions 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 IT-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 Solutions Architect’s value is measured in their ability to increase sales productivity by:

• Play a key role on the EBC team in creating customer messaging that ties together the entire Palo Alto Networks Portfolio
• 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 successfully position a Palo Alto Networks approach
• 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 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
• The role will require close coordination with the EBC Team, 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

Responsibilities

• Engage and establish an advisory relationship with key Manager, Director, VP, and CXO contacts at strategic customers to transform their security strategy
• Educate prospects and customers on how network security is evolving, accelerated by a hybrid workforce and cloud and SaaS application adoption, and work with them to develop a successful strategy for their organization to implement a Palo Alto Networks solution
• Engage directly with senior technical and business leaders at key prospects and customers as a security expert to penetrate whitespace accounts and expand Palo Alto Networks’ 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 the Palo Alto Networks
• 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.)
• Work closely with the theater CISO, Architect and Business Value resources to ensure that you maintain a coordinated market approach