Principal Architect

Our Mission At Palo Alto Networks®, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you’re ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you’re in the right place.

Who We Are In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us! This role is remote, but distance is no barrier to impact. Our hybrid teams collaborate across geographies to solve big problems, stay close to our customers, and grow together. You will be part of a culture that values trust, accountability, and shared success where your work truly matters.

The Team Our GTM team members work hand in hand with large organizations around the world to keep their digital environments protected. We educate, inspire, and empower our potential clients in their journey to security. As part of our GTM team, you are empowered with unmatched systems and tools, constantly updated research and sales libraries, and a team built on joint success. You won’t find someone at Palo Alto Networks who isn’t committed to your success — everyone pitches in to assist when it comes to solutions selling, learning, and development. As a member of our Sales team, you are motivated by a solutions-focused sales environment and find fulfillment in working with clients to resolve incredibly complex cyber threats.

Job Summary As a Principal 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 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 Zero Trust, Network Security and SASE 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 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.

Key Responsibilities:

• Play a key role on the EBC (Executive Briefing Centre) team in creating customer messaging that ties together the entire Palo Alto Networks Portfolio.
• Uncover opportunities and convey the differentiation of Palo Alto Networks Zero Trust, Network Security and SASE strategies.
• 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 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.
• 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 CISOs, 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.

Qualifications Required Qualifications:

• Proven experience in pre-sales is highly preferable - We will also consider applicants with consulting experience.
• Extensive knowledge of network and endpoint security architectures, history, and trends.
• Solid fundamental networking background.
• Knowledge of ancillary security areas such as identity management, SIEM, public and private cloud architectures.
• Demonstrable experience in establishing credibility and strategic messaging with large enterprise customers.
• "Whatever it takes" attitude and motivation to do whatever is necessary to close deals.
• Expected customer travel is 50% both in theater and internationally, including customer and Palo Alto Networks location onsite meetings.
• Strong communication (written and verbal) and presentation skills.
• Robust problem finding and solving skills, ability to analyze complex multivariate problems, and systematic approach to gain quick resolution, even under duress.

Our Commitment We’re trailblazers that dream big, take risks, and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com. Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.