Client Executive, SLED

About the role

We are seeking an exceptionally accomplished and visionary Client Executive to join our SLED (State, Local, and Education) Sales team, managing our most strategic accounts across Southern California. This is a role for a true public sector sales master—a leader who will drive Cloudflare’s most complex platform adoptions across SoCal’s premier university systems, major research institutions, and largest municipal and county governments.

The ideal candidate possesses unparalleled strategic influence, a profound understanding of localized public sector enterprise architecture, and the ability to proactively shape how Cloudflare advances modern, resilient cloud operating models for critical regional infrastructure and higher education.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Regional Revenue & Contract Leadership
  • Architect and execute strategies to consistently exceed ambitious multi-million dollar sales targets and annual quotas across the Southern California territory.
  • Pioneer contract strategies utilizing localized and education-specific purchasing vehicles (e.g., CENIC, OMNIA Partners, NASPO ValuePoint, and county-specific master service agreements) to streamline procurement and maximize Cloudflare's regional footprint.
• Local Government & Institutional Architecture Alignment
  • Apply mastery in understanding and influencing Enterprise Architecture across all four pillars (mission/business, data, applications, technology) within highly complex, decentralized public environments.
  • Map Cloudflare’s capabilities directly to localized public sector challenges—ensuring robust protection for citizen and student PII, compliance with CJIS, FERPA, and GLBA, and seamless defense against ransomware or DDoS disruptions targeting critical regional infrastructure and public utilities.
• Southern California Executive & Civic Stakeholder Engagement
  • Lead and orchestrate multiple, simultaneous, highly complex engagements across Southern California’s premier public landscape, including major local governments (e.g., County of Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego County) and higher education ecosystems (e.g., UCLA, UCSD, UCI, USC, Caltech).
  • Expertly bridge the gap between centralized IT governance, decentralized municipal departments (e.g., public safety, transportation), and individual academic colleges to build consensus and drive enterprise platform sales.
• Precision Forecasting & Public Fiscal Cycle Mastery
  • Operate with unmatched accuracy in forecasting, proactively shaping and managing a strategic pipeline aligned with municipal fiscal years, university funding cycles, and regional budget approval timelines.
  • Provide insights that set the stage for Cloudflare's future localized SLED direction, influencing company-wide product and engineering priorities for the regional government and education sectors.
• Digital Transformation & Critical Infrastructure Protection
  • Exhibit mastery in understanding the intricate nuances of digital transformation in the public square (e.g., securing digital citizen services, defending smart-city initiatives, protecting institutional intellectual property, and modernizing hybrid learning environments).
  • Identify regional market shifts, regulatory compliance mandates, and public sector-specific needs to construct pioneering digital innovation partnerships between Cloudflare and Southern California’s leading institutions.

Requirements

• 12+ years of unparalleled experience selling complex, transformative technology solutions (Security, Networking, Cloud) into the SLED market, with an irrefutable track record of consistently exceeding multi-million dollar quotas within major local government and university ecosystems.
• Deep Southern California territory expertise, with a strong, active network of existing relationships across SoCal county/city IT leadership, major municipal agencies, UC/CSU administrators, and prominent private universities (USC, Caltech).
• Strong familiarity with public procurement protocols, including direct experience leveraging regional cooperative contracts (OMNIA, Sourcewell), CENIC network resources, municipal RFP processes, and collaborative purchasing consortia.
• Mastery-level knowledge of Cloudflare's entire product suite (Zero Trust, SASE, Application Security, WAAP) and how it maps to SLED compliance frameworks, specifically CJIS, FERPA, GLBA, and the Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Tool (HECVAT).
• Proven success in engaging and influencing at the highest executive levels of regional government and academia, including County/City CIOs and CISOs, General Managers, University Vice Chancellors of IT, and Chief Financial Officers.
• Demonstrated capability to navigate the decentralized nature of large public entities, successfully executing enterprise agreements that satisfy both central IT leadership and independent departmental or academic stakeholders.
• Exceptional strategic communication and presentation skills, capable of translating complex technical architectures into compelling, mission-driven outcomes for non-technical city councils, county boards of supervisors, and university trustees.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; an advanced degree (MBA, MPA, or an advanced technical degree) is highly preferred.
• Willingness and ability to travel extensively within the Southern California region (primarily the Greater Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego areas) as required for deep strategic alignments and executive engagements.