Sr. Director, AI-First Marketing Transformation

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks®, we're united by a shared mission-to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you're ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you're in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us!

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 Summary

Job Summary

As the Sr. Director of AI-First Marketing Transformation, you will be a visionary leader responsible for revolutionizing our marketing efforts through artificial intelligence. You will bridge the gap between AI technology and business ROI, fundamentally re-imagining how we attract, engage, and retain customers. Your mission is to build a scalable 'AI Factory' that drives unprecedented efficiency, personalization, and speed in our marketing operations, rewriting the playbook for the modern era.

• Define the strategic 'North Star' for Marketing AI, ruthlessly prioritizing initiatives with clear ROI to solve key business problems like Lead Velocity and CAC reduction.
• Oversee the curation of high-quality training data ('Golden Examples') from historical marketing successes to ensure AI models are trained on our best work.
• Design and implement 'Invisible AI' workflows that seamlessly assist marketers, empowering them to operate with greater strategic depth and efficiency.
• Establish and enforce rigorous testing protocols and 'Report Cards' to scientifically evaluate AI model performance on brand voice, accuracy, and relevance before production deployment.
• Implement strict safety and security checks to protect the company's brand and reputation, ensuring AI-generated content is always appropriate, correct, and on-brand.
• Drive the adoption of AI tools across the marketing organization by building trust, managing change, and ensuring the continuous value and freshness of our AI models.
• Proactively collaborate and translate business needs between Marketing (CMO), Technology (CIO), and Data Science teams to ensure alignment and deliver on business outcomes.

• Bachelor's degree with 15 years of experience, or Master's degree with 12 years of experience, or PhD with 8 years of experience.
• Extensive experience in MarTech or Digital Transformation, leading cross-functional teams at the intersection of Marketing Strategy and Technical Execution.
• Proven 'General Manager' mindset with a track record of owning the P&L or business outcome of a digital product.
• Technical fluency in the modern AI stack (e.g., LLMs, RAG, Agentic workflows) and data stack (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks).
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex needs and capabilities between executive business leaders (CMO), technical leaders (CIO), and data scientists.

• Deep understanding of probabilistic engineering and experience designing workflows that handle ambiguity and require human-in-the-loop validation.
• Mastery of change management principles with demonstrated success in driving technology adoption, upskilling teams, and managing organizational change related to automation.
• Familiarity with major Marketing Cloud platforms such as Salesforce, Adobe, or similar.