Senior Director, Sales Engineering - Majors

Zscaler•New York, NY

18h•$215,250 - $307,500

About The Position

As the Senior Systems Engineering Director (Senior SED) for Majors, you will lead the pre-sales engineering organization across the company’s highest-revenue Majors accounts. This is a second-line leadership role managing first-line Systems Engineering Directors, Principal Architects, and senior individual contributors. Working directly with Area Vice Presidents of Sales, you will own technical go-to-market execution, capacity planning, and technical win rates across the region. You will establish a disciplined engineering motion that validates deals against C-level business metrics, generates technical pipeline, and scales practical AI workflows across the field. The role calls for operational rigor, executive presence, collaborative leadership, and decisiveness. You will build consistent systems and standards for technical execution; communicate technical capabilities in terms of business risk reduction and ROI; partner with Sales, Product Engineering, Channels, and post-sales services; and reallocate resources from stalled evaluations or unqualified deals to protect team focus and deal velocity.

Requirements

12+ years of technical pre-sales engineering experience in enterprise software, cybersecurity, cloud architecture, or networking infrastructure.
5+ years in a formal leadership capacity, with demonstrated experience managing managers (second-line leadership) or leading large, distributed field engineering organizations with $100M+ ARR scope.
Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a history of integrating new technologies to enhance workflows and problem-solving.
Track record partnering with senior sales leadership (RVPs/AVPs) on quota attainment, capacity forecasting, and complex MEDDPICC-governed sales motions.
Deep knowledge of Zero Trust principles, SASE/SSE architectures, cloud security, and enterprise networking.

Nice To Haves

Experience establishing or overhauling POV governance frameworks, reducing evaluation cycle times, and improving technical win rates.
Strong AI fluency, including use of coding assistants, LLMs, and Generative AI tools for troubleshooting, solution design, automation, and customer problem-solving, with sound technical judgment to validate outputs.
Direct experience engaging with Fortune 500 or Global 2000 C-level security and IT executives.
Track record incorporating modern AI-assisted engineering tools and automation into pre-sales workflows.
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent enterprise experience.

Responsibilities

Partner with Regional Sales VPs on quarterly territory reviews, account tiering, and technical coverage planning.
Govern SE team capacity across accounts and allocate engineering resources based on win probability and deal value.
Manage regional technical win rates, proof-of-value cycle times, and resource utilization.
Set and enforce customer evaluation entry and exit criteria, including documented executive business goals and CISO/CIO alignment before committing technical resources.
Hold SE Directors and Managers accountable for 30-day technical validation milestones, shared customer war rooms, and preventing scope creep.
Serve as executive technical sponsor on flagship deals, supporting account teams during late-stage negotiations and executive playbacks.
Lead teams in identifying technical pipeline and account expansion opportunities through architectural reviews, Zero Trust maturity workshops, and executive threat briefings.
Partner with Customer Success and Professional Services to identify expansion paths in existing Majors accounts and protect renewal health.
Hire, develop, and retain SE Directors, SE Managers, Principal Architects, and Senior SEs.
Drive performance management, succession planning, and leadership development across the management layer.
Foster a high-accountability, collaborative engineering culture aligned with company values.
Conduct field retrospectives to synthesize product gaps, competitive threats, and integration bottlenecks encountered during POVs.
Provide structured, data-backed field telemetry to Product Management and Engineering leadership to inform roadmap decisions that unblock revenue.
Drive adoption of AI tooling, LLMs, and automation for RFP responses, lab automation, discovery synthesis, and solution modeling.