Practice Lead

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks were united by a shared missionto protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here everyone has a voice and every idea counts. If youre ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are youre in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption Collaboration Execution Integrity and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest we invite you to join us!

Job Summary

As the Practice Lead (PL) within the Center of Excellence (COE) you will serve as the premier technical operational and delivery authority for our market-leading Cortex and Cloud portfolios within your designated this high-impact matrix-leadership role you are responsible for bridging global strategic engineering standards with regional field execution. Your mission is to drive predictable world-class customer outcomes across the entire lifecycle from initial architecture deployment & post-deployment phases.

You will act as the critical corporate nexus aligning Professional Services (PS) Customer Success (CS) Product Engineering and Go-To-Market (GTM) leadership. By championing delivery excellence AI-powered operational consistency and regional performance you will directly influence how Palo Alto Networks scales its most sophisticated cybersecurity and AI-driven automation solutions for the worlds largest enterprises.

Theater Ownership & Execution Alignment

• Drive Regional Excellence: Own the application localized adoption and quality governance of global COE methodologies ensuring they are tailored effectively to regional market dynamics and compliance realities.

• Cross-Functional Orchestration: Establish seamless alignment between Professional Services (PS) and Customer Success / Scale & Optimize (S&O) organizations to define unified delivery frameworks joint handoffs and customer success metrics.

• Executive Escalation & Governance: Serve as the definitive regional authority and escalation point for complex methodology scoping and execution challenges resolving high-stakes delivery roadblocks before they impact customer health.

Lifecycle Ownership & Delivery Scale

• Unified Lifecycle Management: Enforce and champion a cohesive end-to-end customer journey that bridges the gap between initial implementation and long-term account value optimization/expansion.

• Operational Boundary Design: Define refine and optimize operational ownership boundaries between PS and CS eliminating friction clarifying roles and ensuring frictionless transitions for customers.

• AI-Driven Standardization at Scale: Eradicate bespoke one-off delivery approaches by designing introducing and enforcing highly repeatable asset-driven execution models that leverage machine learning insights and autonomous AI playbooks to maximize delivery margins.

Sales & GTM Integration

• Strategic Commercial Partnership: Partner directly with regional Sales Customer Success leadership and GTM executives to ensure delivery readiness dynamically matches fast-paced deal motions and enterprise customer expectations.

• Deal Architecture & Risk Mitigation: Advise on strategic marquee and complex enterprise deals by providing expert guidance on technical feasibility scoping precision risk mitigation and delivery architecture.

• Field-to-Product Feedback Loop: Systematically capture and synthesize theater-specific insights product limitations and regional constraints into structured data-driven telemetry for Global COE and Product/Engineering teams to shape the future product roadmap

Performance Capacity & Risk Management

• Proactive Risk Management: Maintain deep data-driven visibility into regional capacity market demand and delivery risks; preemptively resolve bottlenecks skill shortages and scalability challenges.

• AI Readiness & Enablement: Spearhead the continuous enablement of field teams ensuring PS CS and partner organizations are fully certified equipped and confident to execute new product features service offerings and advanced toolsets.

• Operational KPIs: Establish and track metrics around delivery quality methodology adherence time-to-value and customer satisfaction within the theater.

What You Will Influence

• Global COE Evolution: The design prioritizations and strategic direction of the Global COEs foundational methodology.

• Product Engineering Roadmap: Future product capabilities and GTM packaging based on strategic field telemetry and customer friction points.

• Investment & Headcount Strategy: Long-term resource allocation investment priorities and headcount planning based on regional demand and scalability constraints.

Qualifications

Your Experience

• Transformational Services Leadership: 10 years of experience leading large-scale transformational initiatives within enterprise Professional Services Management Consulting or Customer Success organizations. A proven track record of modernizing global service delivery models is essential.

• Strategic Operations & High-Growth Scale: 5 years of experience steering enterprise-wide orchestration strategic operations business transformation or executive advisory functions within a high-growth cybersecurity cloud provider (AWS/Azure/GCP) or enterprise SaaS company.

• Executive Stakeholder Management: Exceptional capability to influence build consensus and drive massive organizational change across disparate executive teams spanning Product Engineering Sales and Services.

• AI & Security Automation Proficiency: Solid understanding of how machine learning and Generative AI (GenAI) intersect with security operations. Candidates should possess a practical grasp of AI-driven SecOps (e.g. Cortex XSIAM) automated triage/incident orchestration and the unique security governance/risks associated with safeguarding enterprise LLM deployments.

• Framework Architecture: Proven success building scaling and optimizing delivery methodologies operational governance models maturity frameworks and KPIs within complex matrixed global organizations.

• C-Suite Communication Skills: Stellar verbal written and presentation skills with a demonstrated ability to translate highly complex technical architectural strategies into clear actionable operational plans for both technical engineers and C-suite audiences.

• Domain & Platform Expertise: Deep technical literacy in modern cybersecurity architectures. Direct experience with Cortex (XDR/XSIAM/XPANSE) Cortex Cloud and Prisma Cloud (or highly equivalent enterprise EDR/XDR SIEM/SOAR and CNAPP solutions) is strongly preferred.

Our Commitment

Were trailblazers that dream big take risks and challenge cybersecuritys status quo. Its simple: we cant accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need please contact us at .

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age ancestry color family or medical care leave gender identity or expression genetic information marital status medical condition national origin physical or mental disability political affiliation protected veteran status race religion sex (including pregnancy) sexual orientation or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.