The Role
The Channel Account Executive will manage strategic partner relationships, develop business plans for revenue growth, support partner deals, and ensure high renewal rates while collaborating closely with Sophos teams.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Us
Sophos is a cybersecurity leader defending 600,000 organizations globally with an AI-driven platform and expert-led services. Sophos meets organizations wherever they are in their security maturity and grows with them to defeat cyberattacks. Its solutions combine machine learning, automation, and real-time threat intelligence with frontline human expertise from Sophos X-Ops to deliver advanced, 24/7 threat monitoring, detection, and response.
Sophos offers industry-leading managed detection and response (MDR) alongside a comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity technologies — including endpoint, network, email, and cloud security, extended detection and response (XDR), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), and next-gen SIEM. Together with expert advisory services, these capabilities help organizations proactively reduce risk and respond faster, with the visibility and scalability needed to stay ahead of evolving threats.
Sophos goes to market with a global partner ecosystem, including Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), resellers and distributors, marketplace integrations, and cyber risk partners, giving organizations the flexibility to choose trusted relationships when securing their business. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.
Role Summary
The Channel Account Executive (CAE) is accountable for managing strategic Sophos partners. They are responsible for developing joint business plans with partners to hit revenue and profitability targets by developing new MDR, services, MSP and next-gen portfolio customer opportunities, up-sell and cross selling to existing customers and renewals.
This role will be responsible for working with a selected set of Sophos strategic partners across the SADC region, specifically in South Africa. This role will work closing with the local team consisting of sellers, technical and marketing, as well as interacting with the local distribution lineup.
What You Will Do
- Develop a set of selected strategic partners; existing and net new.
- Develop relationships at all levels across the partner to drive revenue growth and profitability.
- Build and execute business plans that identify, develop and close incremental opportunities to deliver outstanding growth for the partner and Sophos.
- Enable partners to take full advantage of Sophos comprehensive solution and services portfolio to improve their customer’s security protection and response.
- Directly support partners qualify and close complex customer deals, engaging wider sales and sales engineer teams where required, gather insights to ensure accurate business forecasting.
- Own and manage the frequent joint business review, and planning process between Partners’ and Sophos decision makers, incl. clearly defined KPI’s and SMART goals with agreed outcomes.
- Collaborate to develop marketing plans with partners to drive incremental sales pipeline ensuring high return on investment from activities like lead gen campaigns and events.
- Coordinate the involvement of Sophos staff, including product management, sales, SE, marketing, support, service and management resources to meet partner performance objectives and partner expectations.
- Drive high renewal rates by ensuring partners focus on their renewals and build an engagement plan to align Sophos and Partner teams, identify new business and cross sell opportunities.
- Motivate, educate and ensure Partner sales and technical staff are go-to-market ready, provide access to certification and training materials and develop an enablement plan.
- Travel both local, nationwide and some international is required to ensure engagement across aligned partners and as a component of managing the landscape, and working at Sophos.
What You Will Bring
- 5+ evidenced years in channel sales and territory management in networking or security sectors.
- Extensive knowledge of the partner landscape across the region, with partner relationships in multiple countries, but specifically South Africa.
- Experience building and executing successful business and marketing plans.
- Understanding of the technology channel eco-system and the business model of different types of channel partners (VAR/MSP/Distribution/Marketplace etc.).
- Adept at account management and business partner techniques with strong interpersonal, active listening, discovery, and qualification skills.
- Solid technical acumen able to explain the benefits of different technologies, strong cybersecurity knowledge an advantage.
- Experience of translating market trends and customer issues and needs into business opportunities for partners.
- Ability to thrive in a team selling environment, winning together outlook with the ability to build relationships and influence via email, telephone and in person.
- Excels at engaging partner personnel across all levels and functions, builds multifaceted relationships.
- Excellent organizational skills and ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks at once.
- Understanding of tools such as PowerBI, Clari, SFDC, Co-pilot and other AI programs.
- This role will require travel mainly around South Africa, especially Cape Town, Durban and surrounding Johannesburg region
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Ready to Join Us?
At Sophos, we believe in the power of diverse perspectives to fuel innovation. Research shows that candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don't check every box in a job description. We challenge that notion. Your unique experiences and skills might be exactly what we need to enhance our team. Don't let a checklist hold you back – we encourage you to apply.
What's Great About Sophos?
· Sophos operates a remote-first working model, making remote work the primary option for most employees. However, some roles may necessitate a hybrid approach. While we are a remote first organization, applicants must have legal authorization to work in the jurisdiction where the position is posted, without requiring employer sponsorship.
· Our people – we innovate and create, all of which are accompanied by a great sense of fun and team spirit
· Employee-led diversity and inclusion networks that build community and provide education and advocacy
· Annual charity and fundraising initiatives and volunteer days for employees to support local communities
· Global employee sustainability initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint
· Global fitness and trivia competitions to keep our bodies and minds sharp
· Global wellbeing days for employees to relax and recharge
· Monthly wellbeing webinars and training to support employee health and wellbeing
Our Commitment To You
We’re proud of the diverse and inclusive environment we have at Sophos, and we’re committed to ensuring equality of opportunity. We believe that diversity, combined with excellence, builds a better Sophos, so we encourage applicants who can contribute to the diversity of our team. All applicants will be treated in a fair and equal manner and in accordance with the law regardless of gender, sex, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, color, age, military veteran status, disability, pregnancy, maternity or sexual orientation. We want to give you every opportunity to show us your best self, so if there are any adjustments we could make to the recruitment and selection process to support you, please let us know.
Data Protection
If you choose to explore an opportunity, and subsequently share your CV or other personal details with Sophos, these details will be held by Sophos for 12 months in accordance with our Privacy Policy and used by our recruitment team to contact you regarding this or other relevant opportunities at Sophos. If you would like Sophos to delete or update your details at any time, please follow the steps set out in the Privacy Policy describing your individual rights. For more information on Sophos’ data protection practices, please consult our Privacy Policy Cybersecurity as a Service Delivered | Sophos
Skills Required
- 5+ years in channel sales and territory management in networking or security sectors
- Extensive knowledge of the partner landscape across the region
- Experience building and executing successful business and marketing plans
- Understanding of the technology channel ecosystem and different types of channel partners
- Solid technical acumen and strong cybersecurity knowledge
- Excellent organizational skills and ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks at once
Sophos Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Sophos and has not been reviewed or approved by Sophos.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time away is positioned as broad, with company-wide wellness days plus dedicated learning days and paid volunteer time.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-related leave appears more comprehensive than baseline offerings, including paid parental leave, caregiver leave, and extended bereavement leave.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Wellbeing support is emphasized through always-available assistance resources and a Calm subscription, suggesting a lifestyle-oriented benefits approach.
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The Company
What We Do
Cybersecurity Evolved. As a worldwide leader in next-generation cybersecurity, Sophos protects nearly 400,000 organizations of all sizes in more than 150 countries from today’s most advanced cyberthreats. Powered by SophosLabs – a global threat intelligence and data science team – Sophos’ cloud-native and AI-enhanced solutions secure endpoints (laptops, servers and mobile devices) and networks against evolving cybercriminal tactics and techniques, including automated and active-adversary breaches, ransomware, malware, exploits, data exfiltration, phishing, and more.
