Global Senior Director, Architects

This position is for a Senior Director, responsible for leading the Solutions Architect team and Specialist worldwide, reporting into the Global VP for Solution Engineering Pre-Sales team.

Key responsibilities include.
- People management & mentor for the architect and subject matter experts worldwide
- Cyber security architect in the field aligned to strategic sales opportunities.
- Cybersecurity Spokesperson at key events, including whitepapers and blogs.
- Building collateral for the field, customers and partners
- Driving roadmap innovation with product management and engineering
- Contributor to Pre-Sales Strategy and best practices

If you are a proven leader and an excellent people manager in the IT industry, looking for a role that’s empowered, an influencer to our customers and partners, passionate about leading teams to be best in class in the cyber security industry and want to have a platform to grow and develop ideas into best practices then this could be the ideal role for you.

This position is remote based in North America and must be willing to travel up to 50%. This role is very empowered within SonicWall and supported by continuous training programs for those who have a passion for self-development.

Responsibilities Include:

People Leadership focus 30%
• Build out the solution architect strategy, programs and metrics for success.
• In partnership with Sales theatre lead and Global SE lead, responsible for headcount planning, ratios to sales in theater
• Teaming with recruitment, Sales, and HR to hire, onboard talent, conduct 1-1 performance reviews, performance management, and mentoring of direct reports.
• Ensure direct and indirect reports, has a development plan that aligns to personal career goals and to the direction of the company.
• That each team member aligned to you has the tools they need to be effective in their role, including home lab, software, and an environment to sharpen their technical and professional skills.
• Responsible for optimizing SA teams’ productivity and effectiveness in theatre or region to maximize the available time, teaming discussions to deliver the required outcomes on time and to the required ask.
• Improve SA productivity, building out best practice guides and collateral where there is a gap, and leveraging reusable components etc.
• Build a culture of teaming, sharing knowledge, trust, and integrity in region.
• Foster cross functional collaboration with peers across theatres, including Sales, Product management, Engineering, Customer success, Marketing, HR, and other key functions.
• That the team (s) adhere to the company values, tools, compliance training, guidelines, and that the solution engineering regional reporting tasks and activities are completed on time.

Technical Sales Leadership 70%
• Actively participate in deal reviews, talking to the use cases, sales status, solution proposed, technical risks, competitive positioning, and next steps.
• Review strategic sales opportunities and ensure solution architect team are embedded and leading technical design, validating use cases and to ensure solution proposed is fit for purpose.
• CTO spokesperson for SonicWall Cyber threat reports, trends, roadmap insights both internally and external
• Build out a minimum of 10 + trusted C level decision maker relationships with strategic channel partners and customers, holding reoccurring meetings with the solution decision at C level.
• Teaming with product management and engineering in shaping roadmap & design considerations
• Leading the field Beta programs for the field, vetting the feedback and liaising with product management.
• Oversight of RFIs/RFPs, managing resource needs and teaming with extended teams
• Function as the escalation point of contact for Sales across technical challenges in the field and be the voice back into product management, support, and engineering.
• Teaming with customer success on key deals to preserve relationships with partners and customers and ensure theatre sales leader and SE global lead are kept informed of the status.
• Ability to position our value proposition and talk to our unique competitive differentiation.
• Co-manage with marketing on regional and theatre events including virtual and external webinars, podcasts, customer & partner roundtable sessions.
• Proactively seek out and consolidate meaningful feedback from regional presales and sales, including customer needs and evolution of product quality perception
• Promotes a culture of teaming with extended teams, working collaboratively with solution engineering theatre leads to bring ideas forward that improves the overall effectiveness of the solution engineering and solution architect organization.

Characteristics of Role:
• Passionate presenter, storyteller, and coach that inspires others to excel in everything they do, with a One-Team mindset.
• Demonstrates a balance of sales, business and technical acumen, and shared responsibility of the regional sales focused activities.
• Excellent communication skills, ability to create a compelling proposal to overcome internal and external obstacles, through facts, solicited feedback from key stakeholders, and sponsorship from direct manager.
• Directs the activities of a functional area or multiple integrated departments through lower management.
• Requires the ability to persuade others in sensitive complex situations while preserving relationships. Applies knowledge to convince other stakeholders on desired departmental outcomes.
• Proactively looks to clarify problem statements as they arise with a sense of urgency, seeks out a way forward and takes ownership of the actions to resolution. This can sometimes include teaming with and leading the SonicWall extended team.
• Exercises good judgment in selecting methods, evaluating, adapting of complex techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.
• Leverages global solutions engineering strategy to define theatre focused goals, work plans and operational objectives and delegates assignments to team.
• Fosters a cross functional team culture, works well with others, focused on the team outcomes.
• Proven experience in selling solutions and working collaboratively with professional services and support to meet the customers outcomes and improve the customer experience.
• Is accountable through team for delivery of tactical business targets.

Desired Education and Experience:
• Typically requires a master’s degree with 10 + years’ experience in leading teams or bachelor’s degree 15 + years’ experience in directly managing teams in Enterprise, Channel and System Integrator Space.
• 8 + years with Cybersecurity and Cloud Industry knowledge
• Microsoft Azure or AWS Practitioner
• PRINCE2 Foundation certified & ITIL Foundational certified.
• Familiarity with governance and compliance issues and management/reporting solutions and requirements. Working knowledge of HIPAA, PCI, SOX, FERPA, CIPA, GDPR, etc.
• Barriers to entry require committee review.