Proofpoint
Director, Sales Engineering - UK Strategic & Public Sector
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The Role
Proofpoint is looking for an experienced Director, Sales Engineering to lead our UK Strategic & Public Sector Sales Engineering team. This is a high-impact leadership role for someone who loves building outstanding teams, partnering closely with sales leaders and staying close to customers and complex deals.
You will lead a team supporting some of our most important customers and prospects across the UK, including public sector organisations and other complex, high-value strategic accounts. You will help shape technical strategy, coach and develop a high-performing team and personally engage in priority opportunities where executive presence, technical depth and deal leadership matter.
This role will suit a leader who can move comfortably between people leadership, customer engagement and cross-functional execution—and who understands the stakeholder complexity, procurement scrutiny and long sales cycles often associated with strategic and public sector environments.
Your day-to-day
- Lead, coach and develop a team of Sales Engineers supporting strategic accounts and public sector customers across the UK.
- Build a high-performance, inclusive culture with clear expectations, strong operating rhythm and active mentoring.
- Partner with sales leadership on territory strategy, account planning, pipeline inspection and resource prioritisation.
- Support the team in complex customer engagements, executive presentations, workshops, proofs of value and technical strategy discussions.
- Act as an escalation point for critical opportunities, competitive situations and customer challenges.
- Help new team members ramp quickly on Proofpoint, the UK market, effective account-team partnership and the dynamics of complex customer buying processes.
- Work closely with Product, Product Marketing, Customer Success, Professional Services, Support, Channels and Alliances to improve win rates and customer outcomes.
- Bring an informed point of view on customer priorities in strategic and public sector segments, helping the business adapt messaging, enablement and field feedback loops.
- Contribute directly when needed as a hands-on technical leader in priority accounts and major deals.
- Partner with Recruiting and HR to attract, hire and retain exceptional talent.
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What you bring to the team
- Proven experience leading presales or sales engineering teams in enterprise cybersecurity or a closely related technology space.
- Previous success as a field Sales Engineer, Solutions Engineer or similar presales leader supporting complex enterprise or public sector opportunities.
- Strong technical foundation across areas such as email security, cloud security, information protection, data security, insider risk, security awareness or governance and compliance.
- Experience operating in complex buying environments with multiple stakeholders, formal procurement processes and executive-level scrutiny.
- A track record of coaching senior technical talent, creating accountability and developing future leaders.
- Strong commercial acumen and confidence partnering with sales on qualification, competitive positioning, deal strategy and execution.
- Credibility with both technical audiences and senior business or security leaders, including C-suite conversations.
- A willingness to stay close to the work and be hands-on when the situation requires it.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills in English.
- The ability to travel within the UK as required by customer and team needs.
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Why this role
- You will lead a team at the centre of high-value, high-impact customer conversations.
- You will work on strategic opportunities where technical leadership materially shapes outcomes.
- You will help grow and develop a talented team while also stretching your own leadership scope.
- You will join a mission-led cybersecurity company solving urgent problems for customers that face real risk every day.
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