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

SonicWall SLED; Maharashtra; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 8,000,000; Full time

Job summary

SonicWall is seeking a hands-on Senior Director of Data & AI Engineering to lead a elite team of data and AI architects. You will balance technical leadership with active coding, shaping the AI roadmap and delivering high-value features for security products.

You will collaborate with Product Management, UX, and Core Security Platform teams to convert telemetry into practical, user-friendly AI capabilities while maintaining strict security and governance in production.

Qualifications

• 8+ years engineering leadership experience.
• 3+ years managing high-performing data, machine learning, or platform engineering teams.
• Proven track record shipping complex, data-driven features or enterprise SaaS products from scratch.
• Experience in cybersecurity product environments is highly preferred.
• Exceptional communication translating AI/data concepts to business value.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & People Management.
• Lead an Elite Team: mentor and align with senior architects; maintain credibility to lead peers.
• Keep a Player-Coach mindset: contribute to architecture and code when needed; unblock bottlenecks.
• Cross-functional product development & strategy: define AI roadmap with Product Management.
• Bridge the gap with Core Security Teams to integrate AI pipelines into the product ecosystem.
• Design user-centric AI experiences with UX to ensure intuitive AI-driven features.
• Execution & Delivery: drive agile release cycles from ideation to production.
• Balance Speed vs. Guardrails: enforce data security, compliance, and model governance.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Data & AI

Hands-on coding

Distributed data systems

Machine learning / LLM orchestration

Stakeholder communication

Job description

SonicWall is a cybersecurity forerunner with more than 30 years of expertise and is recognized as a leading partner-first company, ensuring our partners and their customers are never alone in 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, visit www.sonicwall.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

Senior Director - Data & AI Engineering

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.

Key Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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 on recruiting a diverse mix of talented people and providing active security solutions in 100+ countries.