Security Sales Engineer - Chicago, Pre-sales

Tenable, the exposure management company behind Nessus, is seeking an experienced Pre-Sales Engineer to own the business and technical aspects of strategic enterprise selling in the Chicago region. You will partner with Enterprise Territory Managers and a strong team of peers to differentiate Tenable solutions from competitors, position unique business value, and create lasting customer relationships, from hands-on engineers all the way up to CISOs.

Responsibilities

• Deliver compelling technical presentations and live demonstrations of Tenable Enterprise products.
• Manage enterprise software trials and Proof of Concept evaluations, mapping unique business values to customer objectives.
• Provide consultative guidance on security best practices, compliance frameworks, and risk management.
• Maintain and strengthen relationships with existing customers while identifying and cultivating new strategic opportunities.
• Present thought leadership content and represent Tenable at industry events, executive briefings, and customer-facing sessions.
• Engage key stakeholders from engineers to CISOs and influence decision-making through strategic technical selling.
• Collaborate with product management and engineering to surface customer feedback and prioritize critical use cases, contributing ideas for new product features.
• Deliver clear status reports for Proofs of Value and active opportunities to support forecasting and territory growth goals.
• Travel as needed (typically around 25%) to support key customer engagements and high-impact cybersecurity events.

Qualifications

• 3 to 5 years of experience in a customer-facing technical sales role, with a demonstrated track record as a trusted and successful sales engineer.
• Proven ability to lead and win technical proof-of-value engagements with strategic enterprise customers.
• A customer-centric mindset with a relentless focus on delivering business value and building long-term relationships.
• Recognized thought leadership in cybersecurity, including public speaking and industry engagement experience.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to tailor presentations to engineers, security professionals, and executive stakeholders.
• High emotional intelligence to navigate complex stakeholder dynamics and stay grounded during high-pressure technical demonstrations.
• Ideally: 5+ years of sales engineering experience focused on vulnerability management, cloud security, or complex enterprise SaaS, plus core network security and TCP/IP foundations including the OSI model and packet analysis.