Senior Director - Data & AI Engineering (Cybersecurity/Network Security Domain Experience Requi[...]

SonicWall; Pune District; On-site; INR 2,000,000 - 4,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

SonicWall in Pune, India, seeks a Senior Director of Data & AI Engineering to lead a highly specialized team of data and AI architects. You will bridge deep technical work with product delivery, writing code and architecting solutions while collaborating with Product Management, UX, and Core Security Platform teams to shed high-value AI features.

You will guide the translation of complex telemetry into tangible features, shaping AI-powered user experiences and ensuring secure, scalable

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering leadership experience.
• 3+ years managing high-performing data, machine learning, or platform teams.
• Strong software architecture and hands-on coding capability.
• Proven record shipping data-driven features or enterprise SaaS.
• Experience in cybersecurity product environments preferred.
• Excellent ability to translate AI/data concepts to business value.

Responsibilities

• Lead a senior data and AI engineering team of architects and engineers.
• Maintain hands-on involvement in architecture and coding when needed.
• Partner with Product, UX and Core Security teams to deploy AI features.
• Drive agile releases with data security and compliance guardrails.

Skills

Engineering leadership

People management

Hands-on coding

AI/ML architecture

Product delivery

Cybersecurity domain knowledge

Strategic communication

Job description

Senior Director - Data & AI Engineering (Cybersecurity/Network Security Domain Experience Required)

Pune, Maharashtra, India

SonicWall is a cybersecurity forerunnerwith more than 30 years of expertise and is recognized as a leading partner-first company, ensuring our partners and their customers are never alonein the fight against cybercrime. With the ability to build, scale and manage security across the cloud, hybrid and traditional environments in real-time, SonicWall provides relentless security against the most evasive cyberattacks across endless exposure points for increasingly remote, mobile and cloud-enabled users. With its own threat research center, SonicWall can quickly and economically provide purpose-built security solutions to enable any organization—enterprise, government agencies and SMBs—around the world. For more information, visitwww.sonicwall.com or follow us onTwitter ,LinkedIn ,Facebook andInstagram .

Role Overview

We are looking for a hands-on, product-minded Senior Director of Data & AI Engineering to lead our newly formed, elite Data & AI team. In this role, you will lead a highly specialized team comprising data and AI/ML architects.

You are the bridge between deep technical innovation and product delivery. You will not only manage and guide these world-class engineers, but you will also remain actively hands-on—writing code, architecting solutions, and directly collaborating with Product Management, UX, and Core Security Platform teams to transform complex telemetry (logs, configs, alerts) into shipped, high-value AI features.

1. Technical Leadership & People Management

• Lead an Elite Team: Manage, mentor, and align with a highly senior team of architects. You must possess the deep technical credibility to lead peers of this caliber.
• Keep a "Player-Coach" Mindset: Remain actively hands-on. You will contribute to architecture design, write code where needed, perform high-level reviews, and unblock complex technical bottlenecks alongside your team.
• Cultivate a High-Performance Culture: Foster an environment of rapid experimentation, continuous learning, and rigorous engineering standards, balancing cutting-edge AI research with disciplined production deployment.

2. Cross-Functional Product Development & Strategy

• Translate Tech into Product: Partner closely with Product Management to define the AI roadmap, translating complex engineering breakthroughs into clear, highly valuable customer features.
• Bridge the Gap with Core Security Teams: Collaborate with our core security researchers and platform engineers to seamlessly integrate our data and AI runtime pipelines into the broader product ecosystem.
• Design User-Centric AI Experiences: Work with UX designers to ensure AI-driven recommendations, summaries, and analyses are intuitive, actionable, and seamlessly woven into user workflows.

3. Execution & Delivery

• Own the Release Cycle: Drive the agile execution and delivery of Data and AI-powered product features from ideation to production.
• Balance Speed vs. Guardrails: Establish the processes required to ship fast while ensuring the data security, compliance, and strict model guardrails necessary in a cybersecurity product.
• Manage Stakeholders: Communicate technical concepts, timelines, and business impacts clearly to executive leadership, customers, and cross-functional teams.

Required Experience & Skills

• Experience: 8+ years of engineering leadership experience, with at least 3+ years managing high-performing data, machine learning, or platform engineering teams.
• Hands-on Technical Background: A strong technical foundation in software architecture, distributed data systems, or machine learning (ideally with modern generative AI and LLM orchestration). You should still feel comfortable looking at code and diving deep into technical design docs.
• Product Delivery Track Record: Proven experience shipping complex, data-driven features or enterprise SaaS products from scratch.
• Cybersecurity Domain Context: Previous experience working in a security product environment (navigating security logs, firewall/cloud configurations, threat detection, or compliance frameworks) is highly preferred.
• Exceptional Communication: The ability to translate technical AI and data concepts into clear business value for non-technical stakeholders, and vice-versa.

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SonicWall is an equal opportunity employer.

We are committed to creating a diverse environment and are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

At SonicWall, we pride ourselves in recruiting a diverse mix of talented people and providing active security solutions in 100+ countries.

As set forth in SonicWall’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.