[Hiring] Field CISO @Illumio

Role Description

As Field CISO & Principal Architect, this person is Illumio’s most credible external voice on Zero Trust Segmentation and breach containment — engaging CISOs and CTOs at strategic accounts as a peer, shaping the category narrative with industry analysts (Gartner, Forrester, and other leading firms), and representing the company at industry events. This person also personally owns the technical backbone of pre-sales for the category: the Use Case Map, demo environments, POC/POV frameworks, and reference architectures that the rest of the global SE team (AMS, EMEA, APAC) builds on.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Field Leadership & Evangelism
  • Serve as Illumio’s foremost executive voice on Zero Trust Segmentation and breach containment, in the field and in public — conferences, webinars, analyst briefings, and published content.
  • Build and maintain analyst relationships (Gartner, Forrester, and other leading firms) to shape how the category is defined and evaluated in the market.
  • Engage CISO- and CTO-level stakeholders directly on the most strategic opportunities, drawing on firsthand operating experience to act as a peer and trusted advisor alongside regional SE leads and AEs.
  • Partner with Sales and GTM leadership to shape go-to-market and revenue acceleration strategy.
  • Partner with Product Marketing and Product Management to shape positioning, messaging, and roadmap priorities, informed directly by field and firsthand operator signal.
• Technical Architecture & Enablement Ownership
  • Own and continuously evolve the Use Case Map, Demo Runbook, and reference architectures used across the global SE organization.
  • Personally design and build flagship demo environments and POC/POV frameworks, including integration patterns and success-criteria templates.
  • Partner directly with product engineering to translate roadmap into sellable, demoable capability, and drive pre-sales enablement to sell-ready status and beyond.
  • Maintain deep, current hands-on fluency with the Illumio platform — including segmentation, hybrid cloud detection and response, and broader Zero Trust architecture concepts.
• Enterprise Pre-Sales & POC Execution
  • Lead or co-lead the most strategic and complex opportunities globally, engaging directly alongside AMS, EMEA, and APAC SE teams.
  • Architect and execute high-stakes POCs/POVs, including technical prerequisites, integration scoping, success-criteria definition, and executive readout.
  • Act as the final technical and executive escalation point for deals across regions, ensuring a consistent, credible narrative in front of customers.
• Team Enablement & Capability Building
  • Design and deliver training curriculum and certification paths for the global SE team.
  • Build battlecards, FAQs, and RFP response libraries, keeping the team current against an evolving competitive landscape.
  • Mentor SE Leads and SEs on segmentation and breach containment concepts, positioning, and objection handling — bringing an operator’s perspective on how real security teams evaluate and adopt these solutions.
• Product & Market Feedback Loop
  • Serve as a structured, credible voice of the field back to Product Management on roadmap priorities, feature gaps, and competitive intelligence.
  • Track and analyze the competitive landscape across microsegmentation, Zero Trust, and cloud detection and response, including new entrants and adjacent incumbents extending into the space.

Qualifications

• Prior experience as a CISO, Deputy CISO, or senior security executive (VP/Director of Information Security) is required.
• 10+ years of experience leading enterprise security programs, with direct, hands-on exposure to network segmentation, Zero Trust architecture, incident response and breach containment, or cloud security.
• Demonstrated ability to speak credibly to both engineering and executive/board audiences — translating technical risk into business terms and back again.
• Demonstrated track record as an external-facing voice: conference speaking, analyst engagement, published thought leadership, or peer-community leadership (e.g., CISO forums, ISACs).
• Proven hands-on architecture and build capability — this is not a strategy-only role; the person must be able to personally build and demo complex technical environments.
• Demonstrated experience engaging CISO- and CTO-level stakeholders, ideally as a former peer, on strategic, multi-stakeholder decisions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, able to move fluidly between deep technical detail and executive narrative.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Cybersecurity, or equivalent experience.
• Willingness and ability to travel 30–50% for customer, analyst, and industry engagements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior title of CISO, Deputy CISO, Field CISO, or VP/Director of Information Security at an enterprise or mid-market organization.
• Direct operational experience running a segmentation, Zero Trust, or breach containment program.
• Experience with microsegmentation, CNAPP, cloud security posture management, or hybrid cloud detection and response tooling.
• Existing relationships with analyst firms (Gartner, Forrester, and others) covering network security, Zero Trust, or security operations.
• Experience integrating or building go-to-market plans around a new or acquired product line.
• Published thought leadership — blogs, whitepapers, podcasts, or conference talks — on breach containment, Zero Trust, or cyber resilience.

Benefits

• Illumio believes that an environment of unique backgrounds, experiences, viewpoints, and individual contributions creates a culture of belonging, drives our future, and makes us stronger together in support of our customers and their success.