Director, Global Critical Situation Manager

About Us

Proofpoint is a global leader in human- and agent-centric cybersecurity. We protect how people, data, and AI agents connect across email, cloud, and collaboration tools. Over 80 of the Fortune 100, 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations trust Proofpoint to stop threats, prevent data loss, and build resilience across their people and AI workflows. Our mission is simple: safeguard the digital world and empower people to work securely and confidently.

Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people.

At Proofpoint you’ll be part of a global team that breaks barriers to redefine cybersecurity guided by our BRAVE core values:

• Bold in how we dream and innovate
• Responsive to feedback, challenges and opportunities
• Accountable for results and best in class outcomes
• Visionary in future focused problem-solving
• Exceptional in execution and impact

Customer Success and operational excellence are vital to Proofpoint’s long‑term growth and profitability. Ultimately, Proofpoint’s success is dependent on the success of its customers. The business must ensure its customers are receiving significant value from both its products and services. As such, Proofpoint needs a senior leader to drive success for its customers, executing against the organization’s broader customer success strategy.

The Director of the Global Critical Situation Management team is a senior leader responsible for driving world‑class customer support outcomes, leading the organization’s most urgent customer escalations, and ensuring that customers achieve maximum value from Proofpoint’s products and services.

This role blends operational leadership of global technical support with the strategic, customer advocacy driven functions of critical incident command. The Director will oversee break/fix support delivery, manage critical customer situations from initiation through resolution and post‑mortem, strengthen cross‑functional alignment, and drive continuous improvement across people, process, and technology.

• Execute a comprehensive critical situation management and customer success strategy, including hiring, onboarding, performance standards, and operational plans.
• Define success criteria and track adherence to key operational metrics for escalations.
• Develop standards for handling customer incidents, escalation paths, and communication frameworks that drive successful outcomes.
• Improve customer satisfaction and overall customer health across the lifecycle.
• Evaluate customer needs, identify gaps, and drive initiatives that strengthen customer value realization.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally with Technical Account Management, Professional Services, Product and Engineering to support customer success.
• Promote business continuity and operational excellence across the global support community.
• Lead effectively in a matrixed, cross‑functional environment.

• Serve as the executive escalation point for the most urgent and complex customer situations.
• Lead cross‑functional triage and resolution efforts, coordinating Support, Engineering, Product, Security, and Operations.
• Provide clear, timely, customer‑facing status updates and internal reporting during critical incidents.
• Manage SEV 0 escalations from initial detection through root cause analysis and post‑incident review.
• Conduct post‑escalation analysis and author customer‑facing cause analysis documents.
• Evaluate customer requests related to SLA violations and ensure appropriate internal review.
• Lead cross‑departmental process improvements to maximize customer retention and reduce repeat escalations.
• Participate in the 24×7 on‑call rotation as needed.

• Use customer data, operational metrics, and market insights to identify trends and drive continuous improvement with product and engineering teams.
• Partner with business and technical leaders to build consensus on strategy, prioritization, and process evolution.
• Identify systemic issues and lead corrective…