Principal Architect

Company Description
**At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission**:
Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. We have the vision of a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. These aren’t easy goals to accomplish - but we’re not here for easy. We’re here for better. 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.

We’re changing the nature of work. Palo Alto Networks is evolving to meet the needs of our employees now and in the future through FLEXWORK, our approach to how we work. From benefits to learning, location to leadership, we’ve rethought and recreated every aspect of the employee experience at Palo Alto Networks. And because it FLEXes around each individual employee based on their individual choices, employees are empowered to push boundaries and help us all evolve, together.

**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. 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 prospect and customers 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 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:

- 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 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

**Your Impact**
- 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 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 technol