Senior Manager, Technical Excellence & Escalations

Tenable•Columbia, MD

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Technical Excellence & Escalations leads Tenable’s global Technical Excellence and Escalations Engineering teams, which provide early insight into product supportability and customer risk. The role is accountable for turning Technical Lead expertise and escalation findings into tracked changes with Product and Engineering, and for establishing a consistent escalations practice across AMER, EMEA, and APJ. It sits within Operations & Scale and works closely with the Sr. Director, who sets overall strategy and carries the executive narrative. The Senior Manager owns the operating model, daily practice, and working-level relationships with Product and Engineering that enable change. The position leads a senior, autonomous, globally distributed team through influence, orchestration, and people development. It establishes product coverage and team priorities, operates a global escalation standard, improves supportability and prevents recurring issues, and represents Technical Support in cross-functional product, engineering, and customer-risk work. The role also develops reporting and evidence for supportability investment and advances AI adoption under the Support AI governance framework. The position requires the ability to work in a hybrid/on-site capacity at Tenable’s Columbia, Maryland office, provide leadership coverage for critical escalations outside standard business hours as needed, work across AMER, EMEA, and APJ time zones, and travel occasionally. Applicants must be authorized to work for any U.S. employer without sponsorship.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in Technical Support, Escalation Management, or customer-facing engineering in enterprise software, with recent focus on security or vulnerability management.
At least 3 years managing technical teams; experience managing senior individual contributors, technical leads, or escalation engineers is ideal.
Hands-on experience running an escalation practice or program, including process design and cross-functional coordination.
Demonstrated ability to influence Product and Engineering priorities using support and escalation data.
Experience operating within Support–Engineering agreements, including SLA adherence for defect resolution.
Comfort with support metrics and their analysis, including escalation volume, re-escalation rate, time to resolution, and ticket-volume reduction, and ability to build an evidence case for investment.
Strong understanding of Tenable’s product portfolio and security best practices, or demonstrated ability to develop that understanding quickly.
Technical foundation across networking, authentication, operating systems, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) sufficient to lead technical discussions credibly.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including comfort with senior stakeholders and customers at any level.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
Able to work in a hybrid/on-site capacity at Tenable’s office in Columbia, Maryland.
Available to provide leadership coverage for critical escalations outside standard business hours as needed and to work across AMER, EMEA, and APJ time zones.
Able to travel occasionally for team, customer, and cross-functional engagements.
Flexibility to perform other duties as deemed necessary by management.
Must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. without sponsorship; Tenable cannot provide work-visa sponsorship at hire or during employment.

Nice To Haves

Experience managing remote and globally distributed teams.
Cybersecurity or adjacent enterprise security SaaS experience.
Prior experience as a Technical Lead, Principal Engineer, or Escalations Engineer.
Product Management or program management exposure.
Familiarity with AI-assisted support workflows and their governance.
Experience supporting FedRAMP or other regulated environments.

Responsibilities

Run the global Technical Excellence team operating model and product coverage plan, ensuring strategic products have clear lead ownership, defined authority, and coverage across theaters.
Set the Technical Lead team’s working agenda, responsibilities, and balance of reactive escalation support and proactive supportability work.
Convert Technical Lead findings—including defect patterns, supportability gaps, documentation failures, and recurring friction—into a prioritized, evidence-backed agenda.
Position Technical Leads as credible partners in Product and Engineering forums, equipping them with data, framing, and support to influence decisions.
Contribute to the Technical Lead career path with the Education & Enablement Manager and apply progression and competency standards consistently.
Own the day-to-day global escalations practice, including process design, entry and exit criteria, severity definitions, roles, communication standards, and adherence.
Establish and measure one escalations model across AMER, EMEA, and APJ, allowing regional variation only when legally or operationally required.
Operate and enforce the working agreement with Product Engineering, including defect-resolution SLA adherence, prioritization criteria, update cadence, and resolution follow-through; escalate structural breakdowns to the Sr. Director.
Ensure every root-cause analysis and post-incident report produces a tracked action, and drive upstream product, process, tooling, or enablement changes that reduce escalation volume and re-escalation rates.
Serve as Technical Support’s point of contact for high-severity customer situations, providing assurance and coordination without displacing the assigned Escalations Engineer.
Represent Technical Support in roadmap, release-readiness, and quality forums at Product Management and Engineering Manager levels, using data to make the supportability and escalation-risk case.
Run the working-level feedback loop with Product and Engineering, with a defined cadence, shared prioritization, and visible tracking from support signal to shipped change.
Assemble evidence for supportability investment, including ticket volume, escalation cost, and re-escalation overhead, and partner with the Sr. Director on business cases for engineering capacity.
Partner with Engineering on release quality gates so Technical Support has meaningful input before general availability.
Represent both teams in cross-functional work with Customer Success, Sales Engineering, and Professional Services when escalation or account risk is involved.
Prepare regular supportability and escalation readouts for the Sr. Director, including narrative, trends, and recommendations, and present to senior leadership as requested.
Work with the Operations Manager to instrument escalation and Technical Lead activity in TSO reporting so team signals are visible without manual data pulls.
Lead and develop a senior, autonomous, globally distributed team, including the Principal Technical Lead as a technical partner and strategic extension of the function.
Operate as a player-coach: maintain the operating cadence, coach the team, and personally step into critical escalations or difficult Engineering discussions when needed.
Build succession depth across both teams and reduce single-person dependencies on strategic products and accounts.
Partner with the Education & Enablement Manager to address skill gaps and feed field learnings into broader Technical Support enablement and certification.
Set goals, performance expectations, and measurement for both teams in alignment with global Technical Support objectives.
Drive AI adoption in Technical Lead and Escalations workflows under the Support AI governance framework.

Benefits

Medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance
401(k) retirement savings with company match
Employee stock purchase plan
Employee referral program
Flexible spending accounts
Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
Education assistance
Parental leave
Paid time off (PTO)
Company-paid holidays
Health and wellness events
Community programs
Variable compensation, including a bonus for non-sales roles, depending on company and individual performance