Senior Director, Customer Innovation

Senior Director, Customer Innovation

As a Senior Director, Customer Innovation, you will serve as a critical business driver and executive leader overseeing Rapid7's specialized technical sales organization, including Sales Engineering Specialists, Forward Engineering, Labs, and the Sales Engineering Center of Excellence (COE). Your primary focus will be transforming these entities into a cohesive, scalable, and highly strategic engine that directly impacts global revenue and product innovation.

About the Team

The Sales Engineering Specialist, Forward Engineering, Labs, and COE organizations collectively serve as the technical vanguard for Rapid7's global go-to-market engine. This unified group accelerates complex sales cycles, builds the integration infrastructure that binds our ecosystem together, manages high-impact demo environments, and institutionalizes global engineering best practices.

About the Role

As a Senior Director, Customer Innovation, your primary responsibility will be to drive long-term global technical sales strategy, cross-functional business execution, and leadership scaling across our specialist and operational sales engineering organizations. Specifically, your focus will be to:

• Formulate and deliver an end-to-end macro strategy encompassing Sales Engineering Labs, COE, and Forward Engineering teams with clear, outcome-oriented milestones.
• Develop a comprehensive 12-month organizational roadmap transitioning the team from tactical support to a unified, strategic ecosystem aligned with global business goals.
• Transition the sales engineering integration unit from basic connector builders to an enterprise-grade platform Forward Engineering team capable of advancing architectural vision.
• Cultivate a robust internal talent pipeline by transitioning from day-to-day management to organizational depth, mentoring successors, and formalizing execution plans for frontline leaders.
• Build and maintain formal succession and development frameworks within the COE to raise engineering standards and leadership capabilities.
• Partner with Worldwide Sales Leadership to explicitly define, audit, and document field requirements for specialist sales engineering resources versus territory sales engineers.
• Present data-driven business cases highlighting the strategic necessity, ROI, and resource scaling of each specialist function ahead of annual planning cycles.
• Maintain a highly visible executive presence in high-stakes corporate settings, driving cross-functional alignment and navigating organizational change.

The Skills and Qualities You'll Bring

• 10+ years of experience leading technical sales or systems engineering teams within cybersecurity, with at least 4+ years managing multi-tiered organizations (managing managers).
• Demonstrated technical operations mastery, with proven experience overseeing complex technical infrastructure groups such as Cloud/On-Prem Demo Labs, Centers of Excellence, or Technical Enablement functions.
• High conceptual familiarity with Forward Engineering and systems architecture, including API ecosystems, security orchestration (SOAR), technology integrations, and enterprise security platforms.
• Strong financial and operational acumen, with experience structuring headcount models, proving ROI on technical overhead, and mapping engineering performance to revenue attainment metrics.
• High-stakes mediation skills and self-awareness to manage conflict, adapt to challenging group dynamics, and maintain an active, commanding leadership voice under pressure.
• Ability to think big and act small — breaking massive organizational goals into time-bound milestones, executing rapidly, and pivoting effectively based on business metrics.
• Ability to establish clear ownership, roles, and responsibilities within highly complex technical matrices, relentlessly delivering value over mere activity.
• Exceptional resilience and communication during periods of organizational evolution, actively driving alignment and understanding the rationale for change.
• Ability to build global internal networks and integrate diverse technical perspectives to make efficient, transparent decisions that maintain organizational momentum.
• A commitment to embodying our core values, fostering a culture of excellence that drives meaningful impact and collective success.

At Rapid7, our vision is to create a secure digital world for our customers, our industry, and our communities. We do this by harnessing our collective expertise and…