Senior R&D Operations Manager

Palo Alto Networks•Santa Clara, CA

13d•Onsite

About The Position

Your Career Are you a results-driven, exceptional communicator with a passion for transforming critical, high-stakes customer issues into positive outcomes and strategic insights? Do you thrive in a fast-paced environment, acting as the central nexus connecting R&D to the entire customer-facing organization? Are you the operational leader ready to design and embed the critical internal workflows that ensure engineering teams collaborate seamlessly and efficiently on high-priority escalations AND ongoing day-to-day operational tasks? Join our R&D Operations Team as the R&D Senior Operations Manager. You will serve as the primary communication and prioritization hub for your designated region, owning the end-to-end management of the most complex and business-critical issues—from pre-sales Proof of Value (POV) support through post-sale deployment and ongoing crisis management. Your mission is to ensure R&D resources are optimally utilized, aligning their efforts with the highest-impact customer needs and strategic business opportunities, and to define the operational processes that make this alignment possible across various engineering groups. You will be the operational leader responsible for designing, implementing, and enforcing the standard workflows that govern how R&D teams collaborate on both day-to-day tasks and critical escalations. This role is instrumental in cultivating a customer-first culture within R&D, directly enhancing customer satisfaction, retention, and time-to-value.

Requirements

Crisis Management: Experience managing high-visibility, complex escalations with strong coordination and communication control.
Customer-Facing Background: Technical support, customer success, professional services, or solutions consulting experience preferred.
Cross-Functional Leadership: Ability to drive alignment and prioritization across R&D and engineering teams without direct authority.
Strategic Communication: Excellent written and verbal skills, capable of translating complex technical topics for executive audiences.
Process Definition: Experience designing operational frameworks, defining metrics, SLAs, and KPIs, especially around support and engineering efficiency.
Workflow Optimization: Proficiency with tools like Jira, GitLab, and BI systems to analyze bottlenecks and improve engineering processes.
Stakeholder Management: Skilled in balancing competing demands across Sales, Product, Engineering, and Support based on business impact.
Technical Fluency: Ability to rapidly understand technical concepts and accurately represent issue status to internal and external audiences.
Performance Management: Experience defining and tracking engineering performance metrics (e.g., backlog aging, MTTR) and partnering with teams to improve long-tail issues and overall technical proficiency.

Responsibilities

Serve as the single-threaded owner for all critical R&D workstreams in your region, directly influencing customer service delivery quality and Domain Consultants (presale) enablement.
Manage the global Jira priority queue, applying a clear severity and business-impact framework to ensure engineering capacity is focused on the highest-value issues.
Translate customer-facing and business priorities—such as POVs, high-severity cases, and strategic asks—into well-scoped, actionable R&D tasks.
Define, implement, and continuously optimize cross-group workflows to improve execution quality, streamline handoffs, and drive operational efficiency across engineering teams.
Lead communication for executive escalations and major “get well” plans, articulating complex technical challenges through clear, timely, and professional updates.
Establish, track, and report SLAs and KPIs for critical issues to strengthen predictability, reduce TTR, and reinforce accountability across R&D and support stakeholders.