Sr. Sales Security Engineer

Role Summary

Avalara is seeking a Senior Security Sales Engineer to join our Engineering Security team, supporting Avalara’s SaaS offerings throughout the customer engagement lifecycle. This role serves as a senior customer-facing security expert, partnering closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, and Legal to communicate Avalara’s security capabilities, address customer security and privacy requirements, and help accelerate enterprise sales opportunities.

Working alongside the VP of Product Security and Sales leadership, this individual will help scale Avalara’s customer trust program by supporting complex customer engagements, influencing product security capabilities, and strengthening repeatable security assurance processes. This role reports to the VP of Product Security with a matrix relationship to Sales.

How This Role Elevates Avalara

This role will:

• Increase customer confidence in Avalara’s security, privacy, and AI governance capabilities throughout the sales process.
• Improve enterprise deal velocity by reducing friction associated with customer security reviews and third-party risk assessments.
• Influence product and engineering teams by identifying recurring customer security requirements and market opportunities.
• Strengthen collaboration between Security, Sales, Legal, and Engineering to improve consistency and scalability.
• Advance Avalara’s AI-first strategy by helping customers understand our AI security and governance approach.
• Raise technical capability across Sales Engineering through mentorship, documentation, and repeatable best practices.

Responsibilities

The successful candidate will:

• Partner with Sales teams to identify security considerations, technical risks, and potential objections throughout the sales cycle.
• Lead customer security reviews, trust discussions, and technical security presentations for enterprise customers.
• Provide consultative guidance on security architecture, integrations, privacy, and compliance requirements related to Avalara’s SaaS platform.
• Partner with Product Management and Engineering to communicate customer security requirements and influence future platform capabilities.
• Support Sales Engineering by developing responses to RFPs, RFIs, third-party risk assessments, and customer security questionnaires.
• Assist Legal during customer contract negotiations involving privacy, information security, and AI-related contractual terms.
• Develop scalable security assurance content, documentation, and customer-facing enablement materials.
• Mentor Sales Engineering teams on security positioning, customer engagement, and technical communication.

12-Month Success Signals

Within the first 12 months, this leader will:

• Improve customer confidence through consistent, high-quality security engagements across enterprise opportunities.
• Establish scalable RFP and third-party risk response processes that improve response quality and reduce turnaround times.
• Increase reuse of security assurance content across Sales Engineering.
• Successfully support strategic enterprise opportunities requiring complex security and compliance discussions.
• Strengthen collaboration between Sales, Product, Engineering, and Legal to improve customer outcomes.
• Become a trusted internal resource for application security, cloud security, privacy, and AI security.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Security, or a related technical discipline and 8+ years of relevant experience in technical pre-sales, security consulting, systems engineering, or security architecture.
• Experience supporting enterprise SaaS sales cycles involving multiple technical and business stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of cybersecurity controls, including cloud security, identity and access management, data protection, encryption, and network security.
• Working knowledge of security and compliance frameworks including NIST CSF, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, GDPR, and ISO 42001.
• Experience communicating technical security concepts to both technical and executive audiences.
• Strong understanding of enterprise cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or OCI.
• Demonstrated experience using AI technologies to improve business outcomes and customer engagement.
• Strong written, presentation, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• CISSP, CCSP, Google Cloud Architect, AWS Security Specialty, or similar certifications.
• Experience supporting enterprise SaaS organizations or cloud platforms.
• Experience developing scalable security assurance programs or customer trust initiatives.

Experience working with AI governance, AI security, or emerging AI regulatory frameworks.

Bar Raiser Expectations

At Avalara, we hire Bar Raisers leaders who strengthen teams through technical excellence, customer focus, and measurable business impact. As a Deputy Security Sales Engineer, this role is expected to elevate customer trust engagements, strengthen security sales practices, and improve how Security partners with the broader business.

The successful candidate will:

• Demonstrate exceptional ownership and accountability for customer security engagements.
• Raise standards for technical communication, security assurance, and customer trust.
• Mentor peers and contribute reusable content, tools, and best practices that improve team effectiveness.
• Build trusted partnerships across Sales, Product, Engineering, Legal, and Customer Success.
• Exercise sound judgment when balancing customer needs, business priorities, and security requirements.
• Leave customer programs, documentation, and cross-functional relationships stronger than they found them.

AI Bar Raiser Expectations

At Avalara, all security leaders are expected to apply AI in ways that improve customer trust, operational efficiency, and business outcomes. As an AI Bar Raiser, this role will help advance how Security and Sales leverage AI to improve security assurance, customer engagement, and responsible AI adoption.

The successful candidate will:

• Implement AI-enabled approaches that improve RFP responses, third-party risk assessments, and customer security engagements.
• Clearly communicate Avalara’s AI governance, AI security controls, and ISO 42001 alignment to customers and prospects.
• Demonstrate measurable improvements in efficiency, consistency, and quality through AI-enabled workflows.
• Promote responsible, secure, and governance-aware use of AI technologies.
• Share AI best practices and help improve AI capability across Sales Engineering and Security.

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products.  Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.

• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.

• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

Total Rewards 

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses. 

Health & Wellness 
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance. 

Inclusive culture and diversity 
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship. 

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.