Senior R&D Operations 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

We believe collaboration thrives in person. That’s why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it’s needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes.

Job Description

Your Career

Are you a results-driven, exceptional communicator with a passion for transforming critical, high-stakes customer issues into positive outcomes and strategic insights? Do you thrive in a fast-paced environment, acting as the central nexus connecting R&D to the entire customer-facing organization? Are you the operational leader ready to design and embed the critical internal workflows that ensure engineering teams collaborate seamlessly and efficiently on high-priority escalations AND ongoing day-to-day operational tasks?

Join our R&D Operations Team as the R&D Operations Manager. You will serve as the primary communication and prioritization hub for your designated region, owning the end-to-end management of the most complex and business-critical issues - from pre-sales Proof of Value (POV) support through post-sale deployment and ongoing crisis management.

Your mission is to ensure R&D resources are optimally utilized, aligning their efforts with the highest-impact customer needs and strategic business opportunities, and to define the operational processes that make this alignment possible across various engineering groups.

You will be the operational leader responsible for designing, implementing, and enforcing the standard workflows that govern how R&D teams collaborate on both day-to-day tasks and critical escalations. This role is instrumental in cultivating a customer-first culture within R&D, directly enhancing customer satisfaction, retention, and time-to-value.

Your Impact

Your primary focus is to optimize the execution and velocity of R&D by acting as the single-threaded owner for all critical workstreams and complex requests flowing into and between various engineering groups in your region. This role directly impacts R&D efficiency and predictability by defining and enforcing internal operational standards, optimizing resource allocation, and ensuring a measurable reduction in the Time-to-Resolution (TTR) for complex cases and accelerating the delivery of strategic initiatives.
Serve as the authoritative hub for all regional R&D workstreams (Pre-Sale POVs, Post-Sale deployments, and ongoing critical support issues), ensuring crystal-clear communication with all stakeholders.
Own and manage the global Jira priority queue, defining and enforcing a severity and business-impact ranking system to ensure R&D commitments are constantly aligned with the most critical business and customer needs.
Translate customer-facing and business priorities (like POV enablement) into actionable R&D requests, directly directing engineering efforts toward the highest-impact strategic opportunities.
Lead the internal and external communication strategy for all major "engineering get well" plans and executive escalations, translating complex technical challenges into clear, professional, and timely updates for all audiences.
Design, refine, and embed cross-group workflows within R&D to improve the execution, hand-off, and efficiency of ongoing day-to-day operational tasks.
Establish, track, and report on SLAs and KPIs for high-severity issues and escalations to drive organizational accountability and monitor adherence to commitments (like WLAs).
Conduct operational reviews and retrospective meetings to identify systemic issues, recurring knowledge gaps, and false escalations, feeding these insights back to the relevant stakeholders to proactively influence quality and supportability roadmaps.
Deliver targeted training sessions and enablement programs for internal and external stakeholders to improve understanding of R&D processes, escalation workflows, and best practices—driving smoother collaboration, faster resolutions, and greater customer confidence.

Qualifications

Your Experience

Crisis Management Mastery: Proven experience in managing high-visibility, complex, and politically sensitive customer escalations, demonstrating the ability to drive coordinated technical resolutions while controlling customer and executive communications.
Customer-Facing Experience: Prior experience in a technical support, customer success, professional services, or solutions consulting role is highly desirable, providing a strong "voice of the customer" perspective to guide R&D alignment.
Cross-Functional Leadership: Strong organizational and influence skills with a proven record of driving alignment, prioritizing work, and securing commitment from R&D and Engineering teams in a matrixed environment, even without direct reporting lines
Strategic Communication Skills: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complex technical information for non-technical, executive audiences.
Process Definition: Strong background in designing, documenting, and implementing operational frameworks, including defining and tracking metrics, SLAs, and KPIs, ideally focused on critical support and engineering efficiency.
Workflow Optimization: Demonstrated experience with technical data and internal systems (e.g., Jira, GitLab, BI Systems) to track commitments, analyze workflow bottlenecks, and drive continuous process improvements across engineering groups.
Strategic Stakeholder Management: Proven ability to manage a diverse group of internal stakeholders (Sales, Product, Engineering, Support) and align competing demands and priorities based on business value and severity.
Technical Fluency: Ability to quickly grasp complex product and technical concepts to effectively communicate with engineers and accurately represent the state of an issue for internal reporting and external resolution updates.
Performance Management: Drive the definition, tracking, and continuous improvement of Engineering performance metrics (e.g., Jira backlog aging, MTTR), establishing clear dashboards and executive reporting, and partnering with Enablement to reduce long-tail issues and enhance Support’s technical proficiency

Additional Information

The Team

Our engineering team is at the core of our products and connected directly to the mission of preventing cyberattacks. We are constantly innovating — challenging the way we, and the industry, think about cybersecurity. Our engineers don’t shy away from building products to solve problems no one has pursued before.

We define the industry instead of waiting for directions. We need individuals who feel comfortable in ambiguity, excited by the prospect of a challenge, and empowered by the unknown risks facing our everyday lives that are only enabled by a secure digital environment.

#LI-HS4

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 [email protected].

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.