BE PART OF BUILDING THE FUTURE.

What do NASA and emerging space companies have in common with COVID vaccine R&D teams or with Roblox and the Metaverse? 

The answer is data, -- all fast moving, fast growing industries rely on data for a competitive edge in their industries. And the most advanced companies are realizing the full data advantage by partnering with Pure Storage. Pure’s vision is to redefine the storage experience and empower innovators by simplifying how people consume and interact with data. With 11,000+ customers including 58% of the Fortune 500, we’ve only scratched the surface of our ambitions. 

Pure is blazing trails and setting records:

• For ten straight years, Gartner has named Pure a leader in the Magic Quadrant 
• Our customer-first culture and unwavering commitment to innovation have earned us a certified Net Promoter Score in the top 1% of B2B companies globally
• Industry analysts and press applaud Pure’s leadership across these dimensions
• And, our 5,000+ employees are emboldened to make Pure a faster, stronger, smarter company as we go

If you, like us, say “bring it on” to exciting challenges that change the world, we have endless opportunities where you can make your mark.

Position Summary

The Pure Storage Principal Technologist (PT) is a senior level technical thought leader within the Global Sales Organization who will engage with customers, partners and sales teams, as part of the pre-sales function, on the most technically complex strategic pursuits and opportunities. The PT is part of the Office of the CTO with all the responsibilities and privileges that confers.

The PT has a good grasp of IT industry trends, broad and deep IT industry experience, and a high degree of business acumen. The PT has a key role in engaging customers in conversations about their business problems, solution requirements and technology needs to help them in their business and digital transformation.

The PT will be responsible for defining the end-to-end solution strategy for strategic accounts within their sales region. Including the industry and business approach, implementation methods, use of technology and IT processes and will influence the commercial and financial models.

The PT will consult with customer technical executives, cross-sell Pure’s full solutions, services, subscriptions, and products portfolio, present Pure’s vision and roadmap, and bring in the breadth and depth of Pure’s technical community from the SE organization and its specialists, Customer Experience and the Product Business Group (PBG). The PTs will also be responsible for engaging the Field CTOs in the right accounts.

A PT will need to have a broad base of skills and experience and will need to work in cross-functional teams in an autonomous manner. The PT will have a proven pedigree of working on and leading large IT transformation projects whether those are consulting, pre- and post-sales transformational IT services or design, build and run projects in IT departments. 

This senior level resource will be comfortable quickly establishing themselves as a thought leader and trusted advisor with their customer stakeholders. The PT must be knowledgeable across industry, business, IT strategy and technology domains and be comfortable presenting to customer IT executives and c-suite, discussing process with business managers, working with app teams on solutions architecture or with storage admins designing operating models and integrations – from boardroom to hackathons to storage operations.

Critically they will be accustomed to creating a value proposition that is directly linked to a customer’s business model and issues.  The successful PT will be expert in quickly learning new business models and drivers and will be able to articulate how Pure and our partners can help them meet their goals. The PT will keep up with the latest trends, be a disruptive thinker and have experience of driving technology change in organizations.

The PT will have come from technical background and have transitioned through an architecture role before growing their business and commercial skills. Understanding a customer’s business fundamentals and industry drivers using consultative methods, then being able to build rapport with business leaders is key to ensuring that new disruptive approaches are taken up.

A PT will be broadly technical across many areas and deep in a handful – importantly, they must understand data and storage technology but also data science and data pipelines, modern IT architecture, applications architecture and integration, Agile application development and DevOps methods, CICD, automation principles, hybrid cloud architecture and migrations, infrastructure operations, project management, IT security and data protection. 

The PT will have gravitas and authenticity. They will be expected to have first class interpersonal skills combined with a comfortable, open and compelling communication and presentation style. These skills, combined with proven domain knowledge, will create customer confidence in them and by extension Pure. A PT should maintain relationships with several customer technical executives and meet on a regular basis to better understand the market and customer challenges and to cultivate opportunities.

Diplomacy/Empathy or Emotional Quotient (EQ). The role of PT requires a high degree of diplomacy and a strong EQ.  It is imperative that we can look at our value propositions from the viewpoint of our customers, therefore empathy is critical. Being able to represent the needs of the customer into Pure will also need a high degree of EQ.

A PT must be able to apply their experience and confidence to take ownership of Pure’s solution and create structure when needed to deal with ambiguity or no existing Pure offering with which to fulfil the customer’s requirements.

The PT will produce collateral for their customers in the form of presentations, short papers, demonstrations, proofs of concepts etc. These can be harvested back into Pure for reuse. They will also be an external influencer in the form of social media content, blogs, webinars, speaking at industry events and publishing whitepapers.

The PT will work in close partnership with the PBG and CTO organizations to shape and distribute technical strategy to the field and drive PBG campaigns and market initiatives. They will participate in the overall sales to PBG/BU feedback loop, establishing credibility and trust with key PBG leaders, and with key sales and SE leaders. The PT will create, refine, and own a framework for collecting and prioritizing market and product feedback from the field. They will broadcast roadmap current state, prioritization, and changes back to the field, while minimizing field feedback that circumvents this process.

A PT will drive an effective senior technical partner engagement and enablement program that grows Pure market share at partners, grows Partner affinity for Pure, and grows partner independence to sell and size without Pure sales support.

The PT will be a believer in lifelong learning. Personal development will take up ~10% of their time. They will also attend industry conferences and disseminate the information that they have gathered to their peers and colleagues. This will also support the up levelling of the SEs. The PTs will be responsible for the mentoring and development of SEs, sharing of best practices, collateral, and enablement. The PTs will be curators of knowledge for the SE organisation by selecting the best information that they have received and researched and packaging it for the SEs to cut through the noise.

The PTs will establish clear requirements with Pure Solutions Engineering for Pure labs, remote demonstrations, solutions engineering and SE enablement to drive adoption of solutions.

SHOULD YOU ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGE... You will:

• Understand commercial and disruptive technology trends in the customer’s market and understand how these interact to constrain and inform a target solution.
• Understand customer business by actively researching their industry macro trends to determine business issues. Understand who the leaders and disruptors are in their peer group and why.  
• Establish technical credibility with existing and prospective customers; providing the ability to cultivate relationships and envision creative sales and solution strategies that cross-sells the portfolio and generates additional revenue. 
• Understand what represents the best of breed from a technology perspective in your customer’s view.  
• Outstanding communication including written, diagrammatic, and oral and ability to reduce complex ideas to simple terms and express these to both a non-technical and technical audience
• Understand what the proposed solution and change programme will deliver from a business and benefits perspective and to advise on areas where this is not congruent with the evolving solution. 
• Responsible for helping guide the account team to deliver the best solution in a dynamically evolving hyper-competitive environment
• Become a trusted and collaborative conduit between sales, engineering, and product management
• Identifying key trends and mapping customer challenges/needs with Pure Storage’s technology strategy and roadmap
• Ignite excitement internally and externally around the company's long-term vision and ability to execute against the market trend while being the best choice for customers’ business.
• Present Pure’s roadmaps in a manner that inspires the prospects and customers to buy into Pure respecting the confidentiality and changeability of our plans.
• Help maintain the company technical culture to continue to retain and attract top technical talent
• Predict long-term competitive trends due to the constant shifts in the market
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring for the SE organization
• Engage in field marketing events and external influencing activities to drive pipeline
• Proactively engage with field account teams to support key enterprise pursuits. 

WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO BRING TO THIS ROLE...

• First class influencing skills, able to quickly become a thought leader and trusted advisor.
• A customer-first mentality and focus, with a passion to improve our customer’s business through Pure’s unique technology and business value.
• Product experience across technology vendors
• Strong technical prowess, including good working knowledge of storage, compute, database, networking, virtualization, and emerging technologies such as cloud native, AI/ML and/or Big Data Analytics where collaboration in the community and on social media is an advantage
• Ability to combine big-thinking strategic perspective with a detail-oriented approach to problem solving
• Entrepreneurial, ambitious approach coupled with a strong passion to make a difference
• Strong executive presence and ability to evangelize concepts to a wide range of personas and dispositions
• Ability to work collaboratively across the broader Pure Storage organization
• Proficient in driving for results, with a sense of accountability and ability to change pace and focus in dynamically evolving hyper-competitive environment
• Understanding in flash memory technologies
• Strong innovative disposition
• Experience selling to large enterprise accounts in a presales technical role. 
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of experience in senior technical sales expertise
• Ideally end-user technology operations or architecture role experience
• Must be willing and able to work in an open office, team environment

BE YOU—CORPORATE CLONES NEED NOT APPLY.

Pure is where you ask big questions, think differently, and make an impact. This is not just a job, but a place where you have a voice and can accelerate your career. We value unique thoughts and celebrate individuality, and with ample opportunity to learn, develop yourself, and expand into different roles, joining Pure is an investment in your career journey.

Through our Pure Equality program, which supports a flourishing field of employee resource groups, we nourish the personal and professional lives of our team members. And our Pure Good Foundation gives back to local and global communities through volunteering and grants.

And because we understand the value of bringing your full and best self to work, we offer a variety of perks to manage a healthy balance, including flexible time off, wellness resources, and company-sponsored team events.

PURE IS COMMITTED TO EQUALITY.

Research shows that in order to apply for a job, women feel they need to meet 100% of the criteria while men usually apply after meeting about 60%. Regardless of how you identify, if you believe you can do the job and are a good match, we encourage you to apply.

Pure is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or any other characteristic legally protected by the laws of the jurisdiction in which you are being considered for hire. 

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at TA-Ops@purestorage.com.

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