Principal Sales Engineer

The Principal Sales Engineer is a top level senior individual contributor pre-sales engineering role that supports the business at a regional or area level as an overlay of deep technical knowledge, industry expertise and preferably real-world knowhow.   The principal engineer is the top-level presales engineering role and held in extremely high regard throughout the entire organization and a success candidate in the role is an industry veteran with deep technical knowledge, high confidence and curiosity, tremendous drive to make significant impacts across the organization all while remaining humble and a team player at their core.

This role requires a deep technical understanding of security and networking technologies, along with the ability to understand and interpret organizational dynamics to engage with and positively influence key technology and enterprise architecture decision makers. 

*Opportunity Acceleration

The Principal Engineer plays a crucial role in large and complex sales scenarios, providing technical expertise to augment the account Sales Engineer's efforts to highlight the disruptive potential of Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange and the customer's transformative journey. A Principal Engineer's responsibilities include challenging customers' preconceptions thoughtfully and innovatively to gain their trust and encourage their advocacy for the Zscaler platform within their organization. They also need to discern the appropriate times and methods to involve Zscaler Product Management and Specialist teams to expedite and enhance deal finalization.

*Industry Visibility

The principal sales engineering role is expected to have a public facing persona including creation of reference architectures, white papers, blogs, social media posts, etc.  The PSE will take an active role with the marketing team including public speaking at industry and corporate events.

*Enablement

The Principal Sales Engineer will collaborate with Sales Engineers and Sales Engineer Managers to identify areas of knowledge deficiency and coordinate with Product Management and Specialists to curate content for specialized internal technical sessions aimed at enhancing the expertise of Sales Engineers.

*Global Impact Projects

Principal Sales Engineers will play a key role in recognizing, contributing to, and/or spearheading internal global initiatives designed to boost operational productivity within the broader Sales Consulting team. These projects may involve collaborations with Cloud Operations, Product Management, Customer Success, and other in-house teams. Principal Sales Engineers will also lead an internal Technical Advisory Team with focus on a specific Zscaler product and educate Sales Engineers, solicit and provide feedback to Product Management in order to influence product roadmap.

*Team Support

The principal engineer will provide technical advisory support to the local SE team including the conducting of technical screening for potential new hire candidates, participation in hiring and graduation panels and team education and enablement.  Due to the elevated technical nature of the role, the PSE will operate as an informal technical leader for the team and provide technical advise to the sales engineering managers/director.  The PSE is an extension of the leadership team however will not have direct people management responsibilities.

*Industry Expert

Principal Sales Engineers come from diverse backgrounds but are seen as technical leaders that can understand and clearly explain difficult concepts. They act as an interface to the Product Management & Cloud Ops teams for prioritization, planning, and architecture.

 Responsibilities

• Drive deal acceleration via technical expertise and strong sales acumen to win mindshare of customers technical teams
• Drive enablement and solution development with customers and partners to generate opportunities and close new business.
• Demonstrate strong understanding of networking and security architectures and engage in technical discussions with customer technical teams.  Be able to challenge their approach and the status quo if appropriate
• Ensure the regional/area team is fully supported with the necessary resources to be successful.
• Demonstrate strong collaboration skills when working with a variety of Zscaler internal and external facing teams
• Travel 25% to support customer engagements, industry events, and internal development.

Qualifications

Experience for this position is typically gained by 5+ years of success in a similar role working for a vendor or a customer.

• Broad understanding of security, networking, authentication, and Internet fundamentals
• Strong understanding of how to navigate large complex multinational organizational structures
• 12+ years of technical pre-sales experience
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-departmental collaboration on strategic initiatives
• Demonstrated ability to develop and execute on large, complex SaaS solution opportunities
• Experience managing executive-level relationships
• Ability to challenge the status quo and/or help influence customer decision criteria
• Ability to lead others through influence to accomplish tasks
• Excellent communication and follow-up skills and very engaging interpersonal skills
• Top level industry certifications – CCIE, CISSP, AWS/AZURE Specialty, etc
• Minimum Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Business and/or equivalent work experience

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