Director of Sales Engineering
Portnox
Sales & Business Development
Remote
Posted on Jan 6, 2026
Portnox is a fast-growing, VC-backed cybersecurity company delivering a mission-critical cloud platform for secure network and application access. We are seeking a Director of Sales Engineering to lead, scale, and mature our global Sales Engineering organization as we enter our next phase of growth.
Portnox is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with a globally distributed remote workforce. While Austin-based candidates are preferred, we are also open to candidates located in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and Virginia. Off-world candidates will not be considered.
The Role
This is a senior leadership role responsible for owning the strategy, operating model, and effectiveness of the Sales Engineering function. The Director of Sales Engineering ensures that Portnox’s technical value, differentiation, and evaluation experience are consistently and effectively delivered throughout the pre-sales lifecycle.
You will be accountable for how Portnox is technically evaluated in the market, how our solutions are demonstrated and proven, and how Sales Engineers are enabled to support predictable, scalable revenue growth. This role is focused on building and optimizing the system, team, and standards that power sales execution, not on carrying deals directly.
As a core leader within the Sales organization, you will serve as a strategic partner to Sales, Product, Marketing, and Customer Experience, and as an internal authority on buyer evaluation patterns, competitive dynamics, and technical objections in the field.
- Department
- Sales
- Employment Type
- Full Time
- Location
- Remote
- Workplace type
- Fully remote
Key Responsibilities
Sales Engineering Strategy and Operations
- Own the vision, structure, and operating model for the global Sales Engineering organization
- Define engagement models, coverage strategy, and prioritization frameworks aligned to revenue goals and sales motions
- Establish scalable, repeatable standards for demos, proofs of concept, and technical evaluations across segments and regions
- Define, track, and evolve KPIs for Sales Engineering effectiveness, efficiency, and impact, using data to drive continuous improvement
Team Leadership and Development
- Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team of Sales Engineers, including hiring, onboarding, performance management, and career progression
- Establish clear role expectations, skill frameworks, and growth paths for individual contributors and senior SEs
- Build a culture of technical excellence, customer empathy, accountability, and continuous learning
Enablement and Narrative Ownership
- Own onboarding and ongoing technical enablement for Sales Engineers and broader customer-facing teams
- Ensure consistent technical positioning, messaging, and differentiation across buyer personas and stages of the sales cycle
- Partner with Product Marketing to shape how Portnox is positioned against competitors and alternatives such as VPNs, NAC incumbents, and ZTNA or SASE offerings
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Serve as a strategic partner to Sales leadership on deal strategy, resource planning, and forecast risk related to technical evaluations
- Collaborate with Product and Engineering to provide structured field feedback that influences roadmap, integrations, and usability
- Partner with Customer Experience to ensure continuity between pre-sales expectations and post-sales success
Technical Escalation and Market Insight
- Act as the senior technical escalation point for complex evaluations, strategic opportunities, or high-risk deals when required
- Provide guidance on architecture, security posture, and deployment models without becoming a default deal-level contributor
- Maintain deep awareness of how customers evaluate Portnox in real-world environments and how competitors position against us
Systems, Process, and Documentation
- Ensure accurate and consistent documentation of technical activity, outcomes, and insights within Salesforce and related systems
- Drive adoption of tools, templates, and automation that improve consistency, visibility, and scale
Skills, Knowledge, and Expertise
Leadership and Experience
- 3 to 5 years of people leadership experience managing and scaling Sales Engineering or highly technical customer-facing teams
- 5 to 7 years of prior hands-on experience in network or security engineering roles, providing the technical foundation to guide architecture and evaluations
- Demonstrated success transitioning from individual contributor expertise to function-level leadership and strategy
Technical Depth
- Strong understanding of Network Access Control, Zero Trust Network Access, and adjacent network and identity security technologies
- Experience reviewing and guiding network and security architectures for mid-market and enterprise environments
- Proven ability to oversee and contribute to RFIs and RFPs with technical accuracy and strategic positioning
Communication and Influence
- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills with the ability to communicate effectively with executive, business, and technical audiences
- Proven ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders without direct authority
- Strong judgment in balancing technical depth with sales velocity and buyer experience
Core Technical Knowledge (for coaching and escalation)
- Networking fundamentals including routing, switching (Layer 2 and Layer 3), VLANs, ACLs, DNS, DHCP, VPNs, LAN, WAN, WLAN, and 802.1X
- Authentication and identity technologies including RADIUS, TACACS+, LDAP, Active Directory, SAML, MFA, and certificate-based auth
- Familiarity with SIEM, MDM, EDR, and vulnerability management platforms
- Working knowledge of Linux and Windows environments sufficient to review architectures and guide troubleshooting
- Exposure to virtualization and cloud infrastructure including VMware and public cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure
Preferred Qualifications
- Security or networking certifications such as CISSP, CISM, GIAC, Security+, CCNA, CCNP, or CCSP
- Experience leading teams that leverage scripting or automation to improve repeatability and scale
- Background in high-growth SaaS or security startups
What Success Looks Like
- Sales Engineers are consistently enabled, confident, and aligned in how they position and demonstrate Portnox solutions
- Technical evaluations are predictable, repeatable, and scalable without heroics
- Sales leadership views Sales Engineering as a strategic partner and enabler of success
- Product and Marketing work with sales engineering collaboratively to distill the market truth
Why Join Us
- Opportunity to make a significant impact on the operations of the company.
- Collaborative and dynamic work environment with opportunities for professional growth and development.
- Competitive compensation and benefits package.
About Portnox
Portnox offers cloud-native network and endpoint security essentials that enable agile, resource-constrained IT teams to proactively address today’s most pressing security challenges: the rapid expansion of enterprise networks, the proliferation of connected device types, and the increased sophistication of cyberattacks.
Hundreds of companies have leveraged Portnox’s award-winning security products to enforce powerful network access, endpoint risk monitoring and remediation policies to strengthen their organizational security posture.
By eliminating the need for any on-premises footprint common among traditional information security systems, Portnox allows companies - no matter their size, geo-distribution, or networking architecture - to deploy, scale, enforce and maintain these security policies with unprecedented ease.