Director, Cloud and Cortex Product Strategy & Operations

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!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Job Description

Your Career

As the Director, Cloud and Cortex Product Strategy & Operations you will be shaping the future of our security business. You are a seasoned strategist (ideally with a mix of significant strategy consulting and in-house experience) with hands-on product strategy & operations experience and depth in Enterprise Tech (cybersecurity preferred). The scope of this role spans conception of strategy all the way through execution. You will be accountable for shaping the strategy and delivering operations for the product business. Balancing big-picture thinking and C-suite level influencing skills with a nose-for-value and ‘roll up your sleeves’ mindset is critical. This role leads a disruptive team of strategy professionals (most are former MBB consultants) that are highly valued by the C-Suite and executives within Palo Alto Networks. This is a people manager role.

Your Impact

Product Strategy 

• Own and Lead the development of long term product strategies

• Track competitive product strategies 

• Build segment and market specific plans to drive product growth 

• Drive strategic x-functional projects based on c-suite priorities 

• Provide systematic support & analysis for priorities (e.g., competitive tear-downs, narrative re-write and enablement)

• Engage closely with Product Management and Product Marketing to identify opportunities and gaps in the business to increase awareness, propose solutions/choices and develop programmatic responses

• Track the market, collate customer feedback and  understand competitive movement, to influence product roadmap

• Maintain a view of M&A opportunities

Product Operations 

• Act as the connective tissue between product and GTM teams

• Drive execution and optimization on core product operations related topics like product telemetry, licensing, provisioning, enablement / activation, deployments etc.

• Drive rhythms around capturing voice-of-sales / customers and surfacing insights to the product teams to inform product development efforts

Qualifications

Your Experience 

• 15+ years of total experience in product development and strategy, including MBA from a top-10 b-school

• Significant experience in a top tier consulting firm (BCG, Bain, McKinsey- either current or in the past) and / or top enterprise tech companies

• Demonstrated product strategy & operations experience - developing and rolling out programs, driving x-functional initiatives with product and engineering teams

• Material Enterprise Tech experience with a deep understanding of Cybersecurity / SaaS business models and key levers to scale

• Superior analytical and problem-solving skills with a focus on attention t