Principal Architect, Public Sector (SLED)

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Job description

Job Description

Your Career

As a Principal Solutions Architect at Palo Alto Networks, you are responsible for the technical strategy throughout the life of our most strategic partnerships in the US SLED (State, Local, and Education) customer segment. You function as a technical advisor and advocate, thought leader, and executive partner to our prospects, customers, and sales teams.

As a Principal Solutions Architect, you pick up where our executive relationships from our CEO, CPO and CRO leave off and balance business and technical acumen to function as the executive partner for technical strategy and execution.

As the technical strategy owner you are responsible for aligning our solutions to customer problems, priorities, environment, challenges, politics, and architecture. You provide guidance on how to architect Palo Alto Networks solutions into customer environments and articulate the Palo Alto Networks' point of view for solving complex security challenges as the benchmark for success.

As a technical advisor and advocate, you put yourself in the seat of the customer to see the world through their eyes then apply your expertise and creativity to help them realize value through our solutions. You align all technical resources to execute the needed strategy and serve as the executive partner to sales leadership. You 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.

As a thought leader you challenge the status quo and use your subject matter expertise and creativity to think outside the box to architect elegant, effective, and simple solutions to complex problems. You address IT-related issues by leveraging the full Palo Alto Networks portfolio in a way that creates differentiated business value.

As an executive partner you are responsible for improving the productivity of our sales teams through the creation and delivery of business-relevant security conversations for and our key prospects and customers. You also build trust with our champions and decision makers to influence their buying criteria and work alongside our account teams to uplevel our selling approach and execution.

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

Leading and driving national technical programs focused on the SLED (State, Local, and Education) customer segment and designing technical strategies and initiatives that specifically address public sector needs in cybersecurity

Playing a key role within the Sales, GTM and Product teams to create customer messaging that ties together the entire Palo Alto Networks Portfolio

Gaining 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

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

Your Impact

Engage and establish an advisory relationship with key Manager, Director, VP, and CXO contacts at strategic SLED (State, Local, and Education) customers to transform their security strategy

Utilize your expertise in cybersecurity and SLED (State, Local, and Education) customer environments to design and implement secure, scalable solutions that address the unique challenges of the public sector and enhance client resilience

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 (Network Security, Code to Cloud & AI-driven Security Operations)

Work closely with the Area Leaders, Field Strategists and Business Value resources to ensure that you maintain a coordinated market approach

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