Director, Technical Product Management

Director, Technical Product Management

This role will be onsite in Sunnyvale, CA HQ five days a week.

Technical Product Managers (TPM) are an integral part of Illumio’s highly skilled subject matter experts who work with product management, engineering, sales, and marketing teams to help build Illumio’s brand, thought-leadership presence, and demand & seller readiness programs for our portfolio of products and solutions. TPMs partner with the larger product and marketing teams to help execute against our global business strategy and collaborate closely with all our stakeholders (such as product managers, engineering tech leads, demand generation, sales teams, and partner teams) that help deliver across the entire buyer’s journey.

You are a creative, inquisitive, tenacious and eager professional who likes technology and loves connecting technology solutions to business problems. You have a knack for crafting fun, innovative and attention-grabbing content that stands out amongst the crowd, you enjoy thinking outside the box and applying new ideas to your work. You have a talent for crafting messaging that is powerfully simple. You believe a strong team is more meaningful than any single person’s contributions and is comfortable working in an ever-changing environment and market landscape. You are a leader, a mentor, and a coach.

More specifically, you are proficient in modern data center networking technologies and trends. You understand the direction of the industry and how concepts like virtualization, automation, cloud, application development, and security are influencing what vendors are building and what customers are buying. You are able to use that knowledge to connect technology capabilities with business needs in a way that ensures we are showcasing how we are helping our customers be successful.

About the Team :

Our Product Management team has established a culture based on thought leadership, independence, and responsibility. Those who join us represent the leader in Zero Trust security and work closely with our Engineering team to solve real customer problems. Bring your visionary instincts to all stages of the product lifecycle—conception, definition, development, release and post-release activities—manage strategic planning, feature selection, and tactical activities.

This powerful, dynamic team drives our roadmap forward as we work to make the digital world a safer place.

What you will Accomplish :

TPMs act as trusted advisors for our customers, partners, and internal audiences. We are focused on explaining how our products and solutions work by creating compelling collateral (writing white papers and presentations), providing technical training, presenting at industry events, working with engineering to solve problems, and engaging with product management to continually improve the efficacy of our offerings. We are technical subject matter experts in multiple areas of our portfolio, providing thought leadership, and are the bridge connecting engineering and product management with customers and field audiences, by evangelizing the Illumio way of securing an organization’s digital crown jewels.

A high-impact position, providing a critical bridge between the product organization (Marketing and Engineering), field (Sales and SEs), and customers. This person will be hands-on in tool development, and competitive analysis, and will also spend time engaging with product management, sales, and customers to understand and highlight our unique value proposition. We are looking for a highly motivated and technical self-starter that is very experienced with a large scope of network and virtualization technologies. You will use this knowledge to develop compelling messaging, product demos, presentations, and sales training.

Build and manage evaluation and demo environments.

Create content to help customers understand and use product capabilities.

Gain deep insights into the market and the competitive landscape.

Develop and conduct technical field training for sales teams and customers.

Participate in pre-sales customer meetings, demos, presentations, and proof of concepts.

Provide feedback to product line management and engineering to improve competitive positioning.

Present to and interview customers with technical and business credibility.

Work with diverse audiences including Customers (practitioner to executives), Sales Organizations, and Partner business leaders.

Key Responsibilities :

Lead a world-class team of Technical Product Managers. Mentor and develop TPMs

Provide technical subject matter expertise to sales teams and be a trusted advisor for customers (build credibility)

Partner with Product Managers to define new capabilities, manage customer suggested product ideas / requests, drive bi-annual Strategic Roadmap Planning, deliver roadmap sessions to customers and industry analysts

Create compelling collateral that drives pre-sales activities and marketing campaigns. Examples include Blogs, Videos, Customer use-case stories, and Technical Papers.

Play a strategic role in executing launch plans and marketing campaigns (including owning regional plans and collaborating with local sales teams)

Be an evangelist for Illumio’s mission

Create and execute multi-quarter marketing activities for Illumio’s groundbreaking security segmentation solution

Lead new product introductions, launches, and announcements by crafting messaging and creating assets and content for physical events, digital marketing, lead gen, and seller / partner enablement.

Dissecting, understanding, and communicating our value proposition to build effective, compelling, and easy-to-consume messaging.

Working closely with our GTM teams to design effective campaigns that offer compelling content and target intended audiences

Working with our digital teams to improve our overall web presence and digital marketing techniques (web, social, search, PPC, digital advertising)

Helping to plan and execute around the events we host and sponsor

Helping to build content and coordinate webinars, events and other training initiatives that help sellers better articulate the value of the solutions we offer

Injecting content with fresh ideas, outside-the-box thinking, and creativity to help us achieve an outside-in approach

Experience :

Bachelor's Degree or higher, or equivalent job-related experience

This is a senior technical function requiring 10+ years of experience in customer-facing roles, selling networking and security products / solutions.

Proven track record of leading successful projects with multiple work streams, delivered in a timeline manner

Proven track record of managing high-performing teams

Deep technical hands-on expertise in Networking and Security spanning traditional data centers and public cloud networks including cloud-native technologies

Good understanding of the competitive landscape for data center security products and solutions

Proven track record of mentoring and developing talent

Fluency in a wide range of networking and security technologies with hands-on subject matter expertise in two or more of the following areas : Network Security, Firewalls, Segmentation, SDN, Threat detection and management, End-point Security, Audit / Compliance, Containers, Public cloud security (scripting and programming knowledge is desired and will be a plus)

Proven track record in distilling complex technology constructs into simple, impactful, and compelling outbound and inbound messaging. Ability to build, position, and promote content to drive awareness and preference for Illumio’s approach.

Experience in presenting to industry analysts and participating in product evaluations

Be able to present technical concepts, network architecture designs, and security-related topics with all levels of customer contacts including C-Level Executives

Excellent communication skills (written and verbal), storytelling, and solution messaging creation skills including experience working in cross-functional teams and presenting / pitching to business executives

Ability to influence stakeholders and build trusted advisor relationships

Proven ability to support demand generation programs, including events and digital content deployment

Basic programming and scripting knowledge (hands-on) is highly desirable.

Capable of taking on additional charters and responsibilities, including people management

AWS Solution Architect Certification (or Azure equivalent) is a plus

Networking / Security certifications (desired)

Experience in a high-level technical selling role

Represent Illumio at industry events as a speaker

Willing to travel around 25% of the time

About Illumio :

Illumio, the pioneer and market leader of Zero Trust segmentation, prevents breaches from becoming cyber disasters. Illumio protects critical applications and valuable digital assets with proven segmentation technology purpose-built for the Zero Trust security model. Illumio ransomware mitigation and segmentation solutions see risk, isolate attacks, and secure data across cloud-native apps, hybrid and multi-clouds, data centers, and endpoints, enabling the world’s leading organizations to strengthen their cyber resiliency and reduce risk.

Illumio believes that an environment of unique backgrounds, experiences, viewpoints, and individual contributions drives our success and makes us stronger together. We are dedicated to creating and maintaining a diverse culture and emphasizing inclusion and belonging.

Pay Range :

$250,000 USD - $300,000 USD

The pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, location, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, or applicable laws.

Benefits :

At Illumio we offer a wide range of benefits to our eligible team members. Our benefit programs vary by location and can include Medical, Dental, Vision Coverage – Health and Dependent Savings Accounts – Life and Disability Programs – Paid Parental Leave – Voluntary Benefit Programs – Company Sponsored Wellness Program – Wellness Reimbursement Program - Retirement Savings – Equity Opportunities – Paid time off and Paid Holidays – Employee Incentive Program.#LI-KD1 #LI-ONSITE