Palo Alto Senior R&D Operations Manager 

United States, California 

277644166

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Your Impact

• Serve as the single-threaded owner for all critical R&D workstreams in your region, directly influencing customer service delivery quality and Domain Consultants (presale) enablement.

• Manage the global Jira priority queue, applying a clear severity and business-impact framework to ensure engineering capacity is focused on the highest-value issues.

• Translate customer-facing and business priorities—such as POVs, high-severity cases, and strategic asks—into well-scoped, actionable R&D tasks.

• Define, implement, and continuously optimize cross-group workflows to improve execution quality, streamline handoffs, and drive operational efficiency across engineering teams.
  

• Lead communication for executive escalations and major “get well” plans, articulating complex technical challenges through clear, timely, and professional updates.

• Establish, track, and report SLAs and KPIs for critical issues to strengthen predictability, reduce TTR, and reinforce accountability across R&D and support stakeholders.

Your Experience

• Crisis Management: Experience managing high-visibility, complex escalations with strong coordination and communication control.

• Customer-Facing Background: Technical support, customer success, professional services, or solutions consulting experience preferred.

• Cross-Functional Leadership: Ability to drive alignment and prioritization across R&D and engineering teams without direct authority.

• Strategic Communication: Excellent written and verbal skills, capable of translating complex technical topics for executive audiences.

• Process Definition: Experience designing operational frameworks, defining metrics, SLAs, and KPIs, especially around support and engineering efficiency.

• Workflow Optimization: Proficiency with tools like Jira, GitLab, and BI systems to analyze bottlenecks and improve engineering processes.

• Stakeholder Management: Skilled in balancing competing demands across Sales, Product, Engineering, and Support based on business impact.

• Technical Fluency: Ability to rapidly understand technical concepts and accurately represent issue status to internal and external audiences.

• Performance Management: Experience defining and tracking engineering performance metrics (e.g., backlog aging, MTTR) and partnering with teams to improve long-tail issues and overall technical proficiency.

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $230,500 - $256,000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

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