Principal Solutions Architect, Cortex

Company Description
**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.

**Our Approach to Work**

We lead with flexibility and choice in all of our people programs. We have disrupted the traditional view that all employees have the same needs and wants. We offer personalization and offer our employees the opportunity to choose what works best for them as often as possible - from your well-being support to your growth and development, and beyond

**Job Description**:
**Your Career**

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 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 Solutions 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 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 sh