Director Presales Jobs (NOW HIRING)

About the Role: The Director, Presales Engineering Excellence and Innovation will lead a high-impact global function at the intersection of Sales Engineering, technical escalation management, field productivity, and product advocacy. The role supports complex presales motions, advanced proof of concept execution, field escalation triage, AI-driven workflow transformation, and strategic cross‑functional coordination across Sales, Product, Engineering, Enablement, Support, Security, Legal, and IT. The mandate is to maintain operational continuity, modernize how Presales Engineering scales expertise, resolves ambiguity, governs technical access, and uses AI safely to improve customer outcomes.

• Lead the evolution of Presales Engineering escalation strategy, including routing models, intake boundaries, ownership clarity, technical decision paths, and measurable service expectations.
• Drive AI forward transformation across the Presales Engineering organization: prompt libraries, AI agents, approved connector strategy, custom GPT governance, MCP‑based workflows, knowledge retrieval systems, and field automation patterns.
• Own or coordinate complex technical escalation paths for high‑value opportunities, production evaluations, proof of concept blockers, product readiness gaps, access issues, and field‑facing technical ambiguity.
• Partner with Sales Engineering leadership to define and operationalize the future PSE model, including what the team owns, guides, declines, automates, or routes.
• Build scalable systems for technical knowledge capture, including playbooks, enablement assets, intake forms, escalation runbooks, product signal loops, owner registries, and review cadences.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to convert recurring field issues into structured advocacy, including affected deals, ARR impact, technical gaps, workarounds, owning PMs, and requested outcomes.
• Stabilize and improve support coverage for emerging product areas such as Data Security, Insider Threat Management, AI Security, and other fast‑moving Proofpoint portfolios.
• Lead access governance coordination for Presales Engineering, including least‑privilege patterns, CyberArk and SailPoint workflows, lab and demo infrastructure access, queue ownership, approval paths, and exception handling.
• Coordinate globally across AMER, EMEA, and APJ stakeholders to ensure presales support coverage, distribution list ownership, onboarding readiness, and escalation visibility.
• Mentor senior technical contributors and team leads, helping them scale judgment, documentation quality, customer impact, and cross‑functional influence.
• Translate experimental AI tooling into governed, repeatable operating models that are secure, measurable, supportable, and aligned to Proofpoint’s field and customer priorities.

• 10 or more years of experience in Presales Engineering, Sales Engineering, Technical Consulting, Escalation Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Product Specialist, or related customer‑facing technical roles.
• 5 or more years leading technical teams, transformation programs, field enablement efforts, or cross‑functional technical initiatives in enterprise software or cybersecurity.
• Strong understanding of enterprise cybersecurity sales motions, including technical discovery, proof of concept execution, production evaluations, customer security architecture, objection handling, and executive‑level technical storytelling.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex escalations involving Sales, Product, Engineering, Support, IT, Security, Legal, and executive stakeholders.
• Practical fluency with AI‑enabled workflows, LLM‑based tooling, knowledge retrieval, prompt engineering, agentic systems, governance models, and safe enterprise adoption patterns.
• Experience building operating models, intake systems, governance frameworks, enablement libraries, automation workflows, or internal tooling for distributed technical teams.
• Ability to distinguish experiments from production‑ready capabilities and define the controls needed to move from one to the other.
• Strong judgment around data access, least‑privilege, customer confidentiality, security review, compliance boundaries, and responsible AI usage.
• Excellent written communication skills, with the ability to produce crisp executive updates, technical runbooks, decision registers, operating models, and field‑ready guidance.
• A bias toward durable systems, clear ownership, measurable outcomes, and scalable enablement.

• Presales escalations have clear intake, routing, ownership, and closure paths.
• Field teams get faster access to accurate technical guidance, without relying on one person’s memory or informal channels.
• AI tooling becomes a governed multiplier for Sales Engineering productivity, not a shadow infrastructure risk.
• Product advocacy becomes structured, evidence‑based, and tied to customer and revenue impact.
• Access approvals, demo infrastructure, lab ownership, and technical queues have named owners and backups.
• New hires and internal transfers onboard through repeatable checklists and clear technical readiness paths.
• Leadership gets concise, reliable visibility into risk, workload, blockers, and investment needs.

• Competitive compensation
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Career success on your terms
• Flexible work environment
• Annual wellness and community outreach days
• Recognition for your contributions
• Global collaboration and networking opportunities

Proofpoint is an equal opportunity employer. We hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, or disability. If you need accommodation during the application or interview process, please reach out to accessibility@proofpoint.com.