Pre- and Post-Sale Solution Architect

At Finite State, our mission is to protect the devices that power our modern lives by illuminating the vulnerabilities and threats within their complex software supply chains.  We do this by leveraging massive data analysis to provide transparency to device manufacturers and their customers - enabling them to understand and mitigate their risks before they are compromised.  

Are you a self-motivated solution architect or firmware engineer that wants to help educate the IoT community and help implement one of the most innovative cybersecurity solutions for embedded device manufacturers? We are seeking positive-minded candidates who strive for excellence to join and help create Finite State’s commercial sales and delivery team on the ground floor. This role can be based anywhere in the continental U.S. and will be responsible for assisting account executives/leadership team on pre-sales activities and delivering success for signed customers including setting up a 60-90 day engagement plan for platform adoption. The ideal candidate is someone who understands the embedded product software supply chain and is passionate about educating and helping others build secure products that are part of our everyday lives.

Primary responsibilities for this position include:

Pre-Sale

• Collaborate and strategize with Account Executive throughout the entire sales and delivery cycle to ensure a successful client experience and proven ROI
• Identify prospect pain points and security requirements within their embedded software development life-cycle (SDLC) process
• Showcase your embedded security expertise and earn trusted advisor status by providing IoT/firmware security guidance gathered from your experience, Finite State clients, industry compliance standards, and regulations
• In collaboration with your Account Executive, garner participation from economic buyer by mapping the above to larger prospect use cases and organizational initiatives to qualify and expand transaction potential
• Influence prospect creation of Finite State-leaning measurable success criteria
• Articulate, demonstrate, and successfully prove the value of Finite State against success criteria by confidently owning and driving the technical sale
• Coordinate prospect activities and internal efforts during the POV
• Develop an ROI-driven engagement plan to ensure onboarding success
• Funnel product gaps and insights to Finite State’s product management team
• Respond to relevant RFPs
• Evangelize the growing need for embedded software product security to the broader security community by blogging and/or speaking at industry events and webinars
• The role will not require travel initially, but will travel as necessary for prospect/customer visits and industry events when both the company and candidate feel comfortable to do so

Post-Sale

• Create, own, and deliver on the success of engagement plan with a focus on high measured customer satisfaction and proving agreed-upon ROI metrics
• Maintain frequent, scheduled client contact to report on progress, ensure milestones are being met, relationships are being developed, issues are being addressed early (or proactively), value is being proven to economic buyer, and trusted advisor relationship is being developed
• In collaboration with Account Executive, leverage trusted advisor status with contacts to gain warm introductions to peer business units in order to affect license expansion opportunities
• Assist Account Executive during QBRs and other touchpoint meetings to answer any questions and help ensure the customer is maximizing platform value
• Assist or drive the creation of documentation, presentation material, and/or competitive advantages of the Finite State platform

Candidates at a minimum must have the following:

• 3+ years positioning and selling as the technical liaison of B2B SaaS applications or consulting services to technical audiences such as Engineering, DevOps, Product Security, or Application Security including titles such as: CISO, CIO, VP of Engineering, CPSO/VP of Product Security and VP of Application Development. Alternatively, experience as a member of one of these client teams with a strong desire to leverage your relevant technical experience in order to showcase your interpersonal skills and selling talents.
• Desire to work within a structured pre-sales and delivery model
• Well-developed project / task management skills for coordination of client-facing and internal resources and activities
• Strong executive facing experience
• Track record of helping close $300k+ enterprise deals
• Ability to thrive in a fast paced, changing environment at an early stage startup where you will enjoy a variety of daily tasks that will greatly impact the success of the organization
• Team player mentality with a passion for solving customer problems

Although not all are required, candidates are expected to have some of the following:

• Experience at a hyper-growth startup including being an early commercial hire
• Demonstrated understanding of IoT devices and/or embedded systems including familiarity with industry standard hardware (MIPS/ARM/x86) and software (VxWorks/ThreadX/Linux) technologies
• Understanding an embedded device manufacturer’s software development lifecycle including tools used and challenges faced to be seen as a trusted advisor
• Familiarity with administration or securely configuring Linux or real-time operating systems
• Familiarity with firmware, packing, compression, archive, manifest, file system, ELF, and bootloader formats used for the delivery of embedded software
• Familiarity with reading and compiling C/C++ code
• Understanding of unsafe C/C++ coding techniques and vulnerabilities
• Familiarity with open source repositories, package managers, and CVEs
• Familiarity with SAST and SCA products as used in the Web application arena
• Familiarity with firmware security best practices, industry standards, and regulatory requirements
• Familiarity with cryptographic material as used in such systems

About Finite State

Built on two decades of cybersecurity experience serving the Fortune 50 and the U.S. Intelligence Community, our team of experts understands the hidden risks in today’s enterprise networks, where IoT vulnerabilities are quickly becoming the entry point of choice for cyber attacks.

We have a sense of duty to protect the critical infrastructure we rely on including medical devices, power grids and telecommunication networks. We were founded in 2017 in Columbus, Ohio.

At Finite State, we are dedicated to hiring a diverse workforce and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We offer competitive salary, equity, full benefits (medical, dental, vision, disability and life-insurance), 401k plan and unlimited PTO, because we believe it is important to unplug and recharge.

Come help us solve one of the biggest problems in cyber security!

Finite State is an equal opportunity employer. In accordance with anti-discrimination law, it is the purpose of this policy to effectuate these principles and mandates. Finite State prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type and affords equal employment opportunities to employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Finite State conforms to the spirit as well as to the letter of all applicable laws and regulations.