Director, Presales Engineering

Proofpoint; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Comprehensive benefits

Flexible work environment

Wellness and community days

Global collaboration opportunities

Recognition program

Job summary

Proofpoint seeks a Director, Presales Engineering Excellence and Innovation to lead a global function that bridges Sales Engineering, escalation management, and product advocacy. You will modernize how Presales scales expertise, govern AI access, and drive field productivity across multiple regions.

You will mentor senior engineers, craft scalable knowledge systems, and partner with Product & Engineering to resolve blockers and drive ARR impact.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in Presales Eng, Sales Eng, or related customer-facing roles.
• 5+ years leading technical teams or transformation programs in enterprise software.
• Deep knowledge of enterprise cybersecurity sales motions and POC execution.
• Proven ability to manage complex escalations with multiple stakeholders.
• Fluency with AI-enabled workflows, LLM tooling, and governance models.
• Experience building operating models, intake systems, and enablement libraries.
• Strong judgment on data access, least-privilege, and responsible AI.

Responsibilities

• Lead evolution of presales escalation strategy with measurable service expectations.
• Drive AI-forward transformation across Presales, including governance and playbooks.
• Coordinate complex escalation paths for high-value opportunities and blockers.
• Define and operationalize the future PSE model with cross-functional input.
• Build scalable knowledge systems, playbooks, and discovery workflows.
• Partner with Product/Engineering to convert field issues into advocacy outcomes.
• Stabilize support coverage for evolving product areas and ensure access governance.
• Mentor senior contributors and scale team judgment and documentation.
• Translate experiments into governed, repeatable operating models.

Skills

Presales Engineering

Leadership

AI-enabled workflows

Cross-functional collaboration

Escalation management

Executive storytelling

Product advocacy

Knowledge management

Security/compliance awareness

Tools

Salesforce

Jira

Confluence

GitHub

Slack

Teams

Google Workspace

Workday

CyberArk

SailPoint

Vector databases

MCP servers

Enterprise AI platforms

Job description

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. This leader will step into a role that 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 not only to maintain current operational continuity, but to modernize how Presales Engineering scales expertise, resolves ambiguity, governs technical access, and uses AI safely to improve customer outcomes. The ideal candidate is a technical operator, field strategist, transformation leader, and trusted escalation partner. They can move from executive level strategy to detailed operational execution, while building durable systems that reduce dependency on tribal knowledge.

Your Day to Day

• 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, including 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 reusable 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.

What You Bring

• 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 to 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Proofpoint products, Sales Engineering workflows, presales support operations, or enterprise cybersecurity field organizations.
• Experience with Data Security, Insider Threat Management, email security, cloud security, identity workflows, AI security, or enterprise collaboration security.
• Experience with tools such as Salesforce, Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Slack or Teams, Google Workspace, Workday, CyberArk, SailPoint, vector databases, MCP servers, or enterprise AI platforms.
• Experience creating governance for custom GPTs, internal AI agents, prompt libraries, knowledge pipelines, or connector‑based workflows.
• Experience managing global teams or distributed technical stakeholders across AMER, EMEA, and APJ.
• Success Looks Like
• 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.

Why Proofpoint?

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

Our Culture

Our culture is rooted in values that inspire belonging, empower purpose and drive success‑every day, for everyone. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. If you need accommodation during the application or interview process, please reach out to [e-mail].

How To Apply

Interested? Submit your application along with any supporting information—we can’t wait to hear from you!