Industry Subject Matter Expert

Who We Are

Designed with simplicity in mind, Verkada's six product lines — video security cameras, access control, environmental sensors, alarms, workplace, and intercoms — provide unparalleled building security through an integrated, cloud-based software platform. Over 33,500 organizations, including 96 companies in the Fortune 500, across 93 countries worldwide trust Verkada as their physical security layer for easier management, intelligent control, and scalable deployments. Founded in 2016 with more than $700M in funding raised to-date, Verkada has expanded rapidly with 15 offices and 2,200+ full-time employees.

About The Role

We are seeking a highly skilled and knowledgeable Industry Subject Matter Expert (SME) to join our dynamic Growth Team at Verkada, a leader in cloud-based security technology solutions. In this role, you will leverage your expertise in Physical and Cyber Security strategies on higher education campuses to provide strategic insights, enhance thought leadership, guide product development and integrations, and support sales and strategic customer engagements. Your deep understanding of security best practices, cutting-edge technology, key stakeholders and customer needs will be pivotal in helping customers achieve value from their technology investments, while shaping the company’s offerings and positioning in the marketplace.

With a background in leading security strategy in higher education, your understanding of security policy mandates in higher education (e.g. infrastructure security, access control, acceptable use, audit preparedness) and the many stakeholders across safety, facilities and IT will provide thought leadership and strategic discussions with higher education clients moving from reactive to proactive security: establishing baselines, better detection, monitoring and response. Your expertise in how to modernize not only security technology, but network & endpoint tools will allow you to communicate how higher education clients can build a foundation for stronger campus security and many of the security improvements auditors / compliance bodies often look for (e.g. unified monitoring, consistent configuration, fewer vendor-sprawl exposures).

This role is remote U.S.

What You'Ll Do

• Strategic Guidance and Thought Leadership: Serve as the company’s expert on industry trends, emerging threats, security technologies, and best practices. Provide thought leadership through white papers, webinars, and presentations at law enforcement and security industry events.
• Product and Solution Development: Collaborate with product management and engineering teams, and key integration partners to help shape the development of new products and enhancements. Translate market and customer needs into actionable product/integration requirements.
• Marketing and Field Event Guidance: Collaborate with our marketing teams to help shape effective campaigns to enhance customer experience and engagement. Give guidance on industry events, groups, and associations that should be supported. 
• Customer Engagement and Support: Act as a trusted advisor to customers and prospects, helping them understand how our security technologies can solve their business challenges. Provide pre-sales support, discussions on cyber and physical security, and security on higher education campuses,, and post-sales guidance.
• Channel Enablement and Partner Co-Marketing: Working with key partners to speak on industry best practices and collaboration on solutions that best meet customer needs.
• Market Research and Competitive Analysis: Conduct in-depth research on market trends, competitive products, and customer needs to ensure our security solutions are aligned with industry demands and ahead of the competition.
• Sales Enablement and Training: Develop and deliver training materials, technical content, and sales tools to enable the sales team to communicate the value proposition of our products to customers effectively.
• Internal Knowledge Sharing: Share industry insights, best practices, and technical expertise across the organization, ensuring alignment between all teams (sales, enablement, marketing, engineering).
• Compliance and Regulatory Expertise: Stay up-to-date with security standards, regulations, and compliance frameworks relevant to our industry. Advise the company on compliance requirements for security technologies.
• Customer Presentations, Channel Co-Marketing and Demos: Lead presentations, product demonstrations, and briefings with customers and prospects, ensuring the value and capabilities of our security solutions are clearly communicated.
• This role requires regular travel, estimated to be more than 50% of the time, including both domestic and international destinations as needed. The successful candidate must be comfortable with frequent travel to support business operations, customer and partner engagements and team collaboration.

What You Bring

• Experience: 15+ years of experience in technology, with a focus on areas such as cyber-physical security convergence, threat intelligence, investigation best practices and security operations in higher education.
• Technical Expertise: Strong understanding of security technologies, platforms, tools, and frameworks. Ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Industry Knowledge: Deep knowledge of the security landscape, emerging threats, industry standards, key stakeholders in higher education security decision making.
• Customer-Centric: Proven ability to engage with customers and understand their needs, challenges, and business drivers.
• Communication Skills: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. Experience in delivering presentations, training, and demos.
• Collaboration: Strong team player with the ability to collaborate across departments, including customer teams, marketing, sales, engineering and support.
• Problem-Solving: Ability to analyze complex security issues and provide actionable recommendations to both internal teams and external clients.

Preferred Qualifications

• Industry Expertise: Years of experience in leading law enforcement and security strategy development and teams to deliver safety, security and investigative power to higher education campuses and communities.
• Educational Background: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field.
• Public Speaking/Industry Engagement: Experience speaking at industry conferences, panels, and events.
• Consulting Experience: Background in consulting or advisory roles with a focus on security technologies and solutions.

Us Employee Benefits

Verkada is committed to fostering a workplace environment that prioritizes the holistic health and wellbeing of our employees and their families by offering comprehensive wellness perks, benefits, and resources. Our benefits and perks programs include, but are not limited to:

• Healthcare programs that can be tailored to meet the personal health and financial well-being needs - Premiums are 100% covered for the employee under at least one plan and 80% for family premiums under all plans
• Nationwide medical, vision and dental coverage
• Health Saving Account (HSA) with annual employer contributions and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) with tax saving options
• Expanded mental health support
• Paid parental leave policy & fertility benefits
• Time off to relax and recharge through our paid holidays, firmwide extended holidays, flexible PTO and personal sick time
• Professional development stipend
• Fertility Stipend 
• Wellness/fitness benefits
• Healthy lunches provided daily
• Commuter benefits

Additional Information

• You must be independently authorized to work in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this role, at this time.

Annual Pay Range

At Verkada, we want to attract and retain the best employees, and compensate them in a way that appropriately and fairly values their individual contribution to the company. With that in mind, we carefully consider a number of factors to determine the appropriate starting pay for an employee, including their primary work location and an assessment of a candidate's skills and experience, as well as market demands and internal parity. A Verkada employee may be eligible for additional forms of compensation, depending on their role, including sales incentives, discretionary bonuses, and/or equity in the company in the form of restricted stock units (RSUs)

Below is the annual on-target earnings (OTE) range for full-time employees for this position, comprised of base compensation and commissions (if applicable).

Estimated Annual Pay Range$145,000—$235,000 USD

Verkada Is An Equal Opportunity Employer

As an equal opportunity employer, Verkada is committed to providing employment opportunities to all individuals. All applicants for positions at Verkada will be treated without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

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