Principal Architect, Public Sector (SLED)

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.

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!

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 creati