Escalation Manager

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

This role is remote, but distance is no barrier to impact. Our hybrid teams collaborate across geographies to solve big problems, stay close to our customers, and grow together. You will be part of a culture that values trust, accountability, and shared success where your work truly matters.

Job Description

Your Career

The Escalation Manager position is a strategic, high-visibility role that provides the highest level of escalation for customer issues that are jeopardizing the Palo Alto Networks business relationship and/or sales opportunities with key customers.

The Escalation Manager will lead and manage the resolution of customers' critical issues by forming and leading an interdepartmental, cross-functional, and geographically dispersed Palo Alto Networks virtual team which are formed based on the customer and escalation needs.

In leading the virtual team, the escalations Manager will liaise with and work across various Palo Alto Networks functional organizations and business units, and with all levels of the company; from Support, Sales, Product management, and development engineers to management and corporate executives.

Key Responsibilities

Escalation Leadership

• Ownership for driving progress and resolution of customers' critical issues
• Drive clear intake, scope, priority, exit criteria and end to end process to achieve streamlined escalation resolution
• Drive global consistency across portfolio and customers.
• Maintain and improve procedures for customer and field personnel for escalation handling.
• Handle direct customer leadership and technical audiences as appropriate.

Expedite Resolution

• Engage and lead cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams in the development and execution of action plans to address critical situations
• Strong ability to influence and be effective at assigning tasks and responsibilities to successfully achieve all key objectives of the critical account and issues.
• Clear accountability on relevant owners on driving to target service-level Objectives(SLO) and intermediate milestones leading up to it
• Interlock with Executive Sponsors to help resolve roadblocks in a timely manner.

Communication and Reporting:

• Effectively communicate critical issue status to executive staff, sales, support, product teams and other invested parties
• Effective use of dashboards and keen understanding of how to use data to help deliver the outcomes needed and track progress towards SLO.
• Set clear customer expectations and ensure timely updates on troubleshooting and resolution action plans for internal and customer facing communications.

Risk Management

• Make informed decisions on elevating urgency and apply relevant focus to solve for a situation with right governance, guardrails and reviews in place.
• A “whatever it takes” customer-first attitude and a willingness to go the extra mile to foster customer success
• Demonstrate strong judgment in risk management and problem mitigation, as well as making timely decisions from both business and technical perspectives

Retrospective and Preventive Measures:

• Retrospectives and PostMortem to help improve the process/system/product.
• Identify systemic and pervasive issues related to products and/or processes and drive actions to prevent future problems
• Recognitions and reporting on problem areas which will give insight to the magnitude of the issue through the amount of cases or number of customers impacted or related to these areas.
• Understanding of techniques to predict risks using data and AI models and systematic approach to address
• co-create and pilot proactive programs to reduce likelihood of customer and field escalations

Qualifications

Your Experience

• Customer Experience
• 10+ years of customer-facing sales and/or service delivery roles
• Past experience as Escalations Engineer/Manager, Technical Account Management, Engineering Management, Customer Support Management, or similar roles desired
• Customer centric attitude and focus on providing best-in-class service for customers and collaborators

Program/Project management

• Manage critical issues in a cross-functional environment that includes working with support, customer success, professional services, sales, customers, and partners to resolve complex and critical issues.
• Ability to multitask and prioritize with a goal of driving issues to closure on behalf of the customer
• Familiarity with tools like Salesforce, Asana, Tableau, JIRA and experience in running and operating with the SLA/SLO/Milestones paradigm and clarity on what success and corresponding metrics looks like.

Collaboration and Influence

• Strong capacity for Influencing, negotiating, and delegating efforts
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, challenging environment with global customers

Leadership and communication skills:

• Experience in being able to effectively lead and motivate a team of cross functional professionals.
• Expertise in communicating complex topics in a clear and concise manner to different tiers of audiences(highly technical, less technical, executives, practitioners)

Technical skills

• Experience with Networking/Security Products
• Knowledge of LAN/WAN technologies, encompassing general routing/switching/security for both branch and data center architectures.
• Experience with VPN (IPSec, SSL tunnels) technologies

Your Impact

• Ownership for driving progress and resolution of customers' critical issues
• Engage and lead cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams in the development and execution of action plans to address critical situations
• Effectively communicate critical issue status to executive staff, sales teams, and other invested parties
• Creative thinking, adaptability, and versatility
• Demonstrate strong judgment in risk management and problem mitigation, as well as making timely decisions from both business and technical perspectives
• Strong ability to influence and effective at assigning tasks and responsibilities to successfully achieve all key objectives of the critical account
• Identify systemic and pervasive issues related to products and/or processes and drive actions to prevent future issues

Additional Information

The Team

The Escalation Managers are part of the Global Incident and Escalation Management team which part of Global Customer Support and Service teams covering all Palo Alto offerings of cybersecurity platforms and solutions.

Team is responsible for driving expedited response, remedy, resolution, and learnings for our most critical issues. Escalation Managers(EM) team ensures focused technical leadership, effective coordination and communication, and streamlined decision-making

As Escalation Managers, each team member will be at the vanguard of our dedication to cybersecurity. Addressing the most pressing situations for our customers, you will hold a central position in solidifying our reputation as the go-to cybersecurity partner. This role demands proactivity, efficiency, an unwavering dedication to constant refinement, and a passion for customer satisfaction.

Driving continuous learnings and efficiency into the Escalation Management and Product Lifecycle is one of the key areas for the team as we continue our focus on customer experience.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.