Field CTO

About Druva Druva is the resilience foundation for the AI enterprise, helping organizations secure and recover from connected risk across data, cyber, identity, and AI. The Resilience Cloud is a fully managed, cloud-native SaaS platform that delivers air-gapped and immutable protection across cloud, SaaS, on-premises, endpoint, and edge environments. Powered by Dru MetaGraph, Druva’s graph-powered intelligence layer, the platform connects critical business context so customers can understand risk, respond faster, recover cleanly, and govern data with greater confidence. Trusted by nearly 7,500 customers, including 75 of the Fortune 500, Druva helps safeguard the critical information and systems businesses depend on in an increasingly connected world. Visit druva.com and follow us on LinkedIn, X and Facebook. About the Team This role leads Druva’s global Subject Matter Expert (SME) team — the deep technical specialists who own our most strategic workloads, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Microsoft 365, and other cloud-native and collaboration environments. This team is the technical authority the Sales Engineering organization and our customers rely on to design, prove, and win the most complex opportunities. Today the team’s strength is workload depth; the opportunity ahead is to fuse that expertise with a sharp, credible security, identity, and data-resilience narrative that resonates from the practitioner to the boardroom. Identity is a growing part of that narrative, spanning Identity Resilience for Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, and Okta. The SME team is strongest in cloud and workload expertise, so the Field CTO is also the organization’s identity subject matter expert and the escalation point for identity-related deals, while building the team’s identity fluency over time. Role Purpose & Impact The Field CTO leads and grows Druva’s global SME team while serving as our most senior technical evangelist in the field. This leader connects our workload expertise to the security and data-resilience story spanning identity security, data lifecycle management, and data loss prevention (DLP), and carries that story to customers, partners, and the market to drive pipeline growth and conversion. The role is both a people leader and a market-facing authority: responsible for building a security- and identity-fluent SME organization, serving as Druva’s hands-on identity expert in the field, elevating Druva’s brand against the data-protection and cyber-resilience field (Rubrik, Veritas/Cohesity, Commvault), and turning technical credibility into commercial outcomes on our largest, most strategic accounts. What You’ll Do • Engage: Drive security and identity strategy conversations with top customers or prospects and articulate Druva’s security and identity resilience value proposition • Build Trust: Leverage executive presence & credibility to build trusted relationships with C-level technology peers (CIO, CISO, CTO, CDO) • Lead and Develop the SME Team: Manage Druva’s global SME team, setting priorities, coaching, and raising the team’s security fluency • Be the Identity SME: Serve as Druva’s senior identity subject matter expert. Lead identity-focused customer conversations, architecture reviews, and technical wins, and act as the escalation point for the SME team and Sales Engineering on IdP and directory-related questions (Entra ID, Active Directory, Okta) • Build Identity Capability: Coach SMEs on identity concepts, attack paths, and recovery scenarios so identity fluency scales beyond one person • Enable security thought leadership: help build written or recorded collateral and speak at industry events to proactively build Druva’s security and identity brand • Be Voice of Customer: Understand customers’ security and identity pain points across industry segments/verticals and funnel insight into internal product and strategy prioritization processes • Deeply engage with Product, Marketing and Sales teams to define messaging & outreach strategies targeting security and identity personas • Demonstrate empathy towards customers’ mission and security objectives • Collaborate on hosting security-focused Customer Advisory board (CAB) engagements, yearly Druva security conference and other such customer events • Engage with Industry analysts and evangelize Druva’s security and identity resilience value proposition • Drive internal security field-education initiatives to enable nuanced security understanding around attacks, attacker TTPs and attacker mindsets, including identity-based attacks such as credential theft, privilege escalation, and directory compromise • Understand the competitive landscape and help position Druva product differentiation • Engage with Industry Groups focused on our areas of interest and contribute back to the community • Engage with our channel partners on joint GTM initiatives What Makes You a Great Fit • 12+ years of direct on the ground cyber security practitioner experience • Deep expertise in identity and access management, including hands-on experience with identity providers (IdPs) such as Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Active Directory, and Okta • Strong working knowledge of identity security (IDS) and identity threat detection and response (ITDR): how identity systems are attacked, hardened, monitored, and recovered • Understanding of identity-based attack techniques and how they map to MITRE ATT&CK (credential theft, Kerberoasting, Golden Ticket, DCSync, token theft, MFA bypass, privilege escalation), and of how to recover a compromised directory or IdP after a breach • Familiarity with identity architecture and standards: SSO, MFA, federation (SAML, OIDC, OAuth), SCIM provisioning, privileged access management, and hybrid and cloud identity models • Experience leading or mentoring technical teams, including coaching specialists who are not yet deep in a domain, and acting as the subject matter expert for that team • Strong and comprehensive understanding of Forensics and Recovery processes • Experience defending, responding or recovering from Ransomware incidents is huge plus • Past experience running IR engagements, SOC and/or Crisis management teams is a plus • Exceptional written and oral communication skills, including ability to present to internal and external executive level stakeholders • Understanding of how real world breaches happen and protection measures required to be resilient • Ability to distill complex security topics to communicate to non-technical audiences • Familiarity with the MITRE ATT&CK Framework, Threat Actor groups and their TTPs • Knowledge of Public Cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure), SaaS Architectures and their specific security implications • Familiarity of nuanced differences in security practices across Industry segments and verticals • Knowledge of security foundations across Data Security, Security architecture and maturity, ZTNA, SASE, EDR/MDR, BCP/DR • SaaS platform / data-protection architecture credibility • Experience influencing enterprise buying decisions in a presales, advisory, or evangelist capacity • Awareness of Sales and Marketing processes What Success Looks Like in the Role • First 3 months: ramp on the Resilience Cloud platform, Identity Resilience, and Dru MetaGraph positioning; complete executive intros on a defined set of ICP Tier 1/2 strategic accounts; deliver ≥1 field-enablement session on attacker TTPs / ransomware recovery; assess the SME team’s identity knowledge gaps and set a coaching plan. • First 6 months: measurably lift technical-win coverage on strategic New-Business opportunities the role engages; lead the technical win on identity-led opportunities and deliver an identity enablement program for the SME team; drive at least one security-focused CAB / customer event; establish the voice-of-customer feedback loop into Product with recurring cadence.…