Senior Director, Sales Engineering - Majors

Overview

Senior Systems Engineering Director (Senior SED) for Majors, leading the pre-sales engineering organization across the highest-revenue majors accounts as a second-line leader managing first-line SEDs, Principal Architects, and senior individual contributors.

What you'll do

• Partner with Regional Sales VPs on quarterly territory reviews, account tiering, and technical coverage planning.
• Balance and govern SE team capacity across accounts, setting clear criteria to allocate engineering resources where win probability and deal value are highest.
• Manage second-line operational metrics: technical win rates, POV cycle times, and resource utilization across the region.
• Enforce clear entry and exit criteria for all customer evaluations, requiring documented executive business goals and CISO/CIO alignment before committing technical resources.
• Hold SE Directors and Managers accountable for operational rigor, including tracking 30-day technical validation milestones, maintaining shared customer war rooms, and preventing scope creep.
• Act as executive technical sponsor on flagship deals, partnering with account teams during late-stage negotiations and high-stakes executive playbacks.
• Drive a culture of technical pipeline generation, leading teams to proactively uncover expansion opportunities through architectural reviews, zero trust maturity workshops, and executive threat briefings.
• Partner with Customer Success and Professional Services to identify expansion paths within existing Major accounts and protect renewal health.
• Hire, develop, and retain high-performing SE Directors, SE Managers, Principal Architects, and Senior SEs.
• Drive structured performance management, succession planning, and leadership development across the management layer.
• Run regular field retrospectives to synthesize product gaps, competitive threats, and integration bottlenecks, and deliver data-backed telemetry to Product Management and Engineering leadership.
• Drive adoption of AI tooling across the organization, equipping SEs to use LLMs and automation for RFP responses, lab automation, discovery synthesis, and solution modeling.

What you'll need

• 12+ years of technical pre-sales engineering experience in enterprise software, cybersecurity, cloud architecture, or networking infrastructure.
• 5+ years in a formal leadership capacity, with demonstrated experience managing managers (second-line leadership) or leading large, distributed field engineering organizations ($100M+ ARR scope).
• Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a proven history of integrating new technologies to enhance daily workflows and augment problem-solving.
• Proven track record partnering with Senior Sales Leadership (RVPs/AVPs) on quota attainment, capacity forecasting, and complex MEDDPICC-governed sales motions.
• Deep knowledge of Zero Trust principles, SASE/SSE architectures, cloud security, and enterprise networking.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent enterprise experience.

Nice to have

• Prior experience establishing or overhauling POV governance frameworks, reducing evaluation cycle times, and improving technical win rates.
• Strong AI fluency by leveraging coding assistants, LLMs, and Generative AI tools to accelerate troubleshooting, solution design, automation, and customer problem-solving, while applying sound technical judgment to validate outputs.
• Direct experience engaging with Fortune 500 / Global 2000 C-level security and IT executives.
• Track record of incorporating modern AI-assisted engineering tools and automation into pre-sales workflows.

Details

• Remote position in the USA.
• Full-time position.
• Base pay range $215,250 to $307,500 USD, excluding commission/bonus/equity and benefits.