Senior Account Manager: Cybersecurity Services

Location: Sandton, Johannesburg - Hybrid | CPT-based candidates or elsewhere in South Africa; spend one full week in the office each quarter.
Employment type: Permanent, full-time.
Seniority: Senior individual contributor. No direct reports.
Sales territory: South Africa and wider African markets.

At a glance

• Sell cybersecurity consulting services, not products. Penetration testing, security assessments, advisory. The deliverable is expert time and judgement, not a licence.
• Roughly 70 per cent growing established accounts, 30 per cent new business worked from incoming leads. There are more leads than the team can cover.
• You need to hold your own in a technical conversation. If a client asks what a penetration test actually is, three questions into a discussion, you answer properly.

About RedHerd

RedHerd is a specialist cybersecurity recruitment and advisory firm. We work with consultancies, product companies, vendors and enterprise security teams across South Africa, the UK, Europe and the United States.

We are deliberately low volume. We scope roles deeply, read the market honestly, and curate shortlists rather than flood them. Clients come to us when a role is niche, senior, sensitive or business-critical.

We are recruiting this position exclusively on behalf of our client. We share their identity with you during qualification, before submitting anything. We never introduce your profile without your knowledge and consent.

About the client

An established, independent cybersecurity consultancy with a respected name in the South African market and a growing presence across Africa and the Middle East. Research-led rather than product-led. Their work spans penetration testing and security assessments, incident response and digital forensics, threat intelligence, cloud security and security advisory.

Their clients are in financial services, retail, healthcare, telecommunications and other security-sensitive sectors, and they are the firm those clients call when the problem is complicated. The consulting team publishes research, speaks at conferences and runs its own annual industry briefing.

The role

This is a senior commercial seat in a specialist consultancy. You own a portfolio of established accounts, grow them, and open new ones, supported by inbound demand the business currently can't service.

Understand what growing an account means here, because candidates consistently get this wrong. It is not renewal administration, and it is not managed-service contract management. Each year you go back into a named account, work out what has changed in their business and their risk, and sell them work that did not exist before. That is origination inside a known logo. It is a sale every time.

This is also not a management role. You carry your own number, your own pipeline and your own accounts, working alongside the consultants who deliver the work.

The business has kept this seat open rather than fill it with the wrong person. They're looking for someone who can sit in front of a client, ask what they actually need, find the problems, and work toward a solution with the technical team. Not someone who can recite a service catalogue.

What you will do

• Own and grow a portfolio of established client accounts across South Africa and Africa.
• Go back into those accounts each year, find what has changed, and introduce relevant consulting services against real requirements.
• Build trusted relationships with security, technical and executive stakeholders, up to and including C-level.
• Qualify and convert incoming enquiries, and prospect deliberately alongside them.
• Research a prospective client's environment and likely security problems before the first conversation.
• Lead consultative discussions about business problems rather than service descriptions/data sheets..
• Translate what a client needs into a brief the technical consultants can scope, and stay involved from problem through to handover.
• Prepare proposals, presentations, and commercial recommendations specific to the client.
• Build account plans for strategic clients, and recognise when an account should be deprioritised.
• Forecast accurately, and keep opportunities, activity and pipeline current in the CRM.
• Attend industry events and security community gatherings.

What you must bring

• Around three to five years selling cybersecurity, with a track record selling services rather than products. Consulting, penetration testing, red teaming, assessments, incident response, advisory or managed detection. Not software licences, hardware or vendor product alone.
• A quota you carried personally, and attainment you can quote. Real numbers.
• Enterprise buyers. CISOs, Heads of Security, CIOs, and the longer multi-stakeholder cycles that go with them.
• Growth inside existing accounts, not renewals administration. Evidence of selling new work into a logo you already held.
• Enough technical fluency to be credible unaided. You can discuss penetration testing, security assessments and risk work accurately, and research an unfamiliar security topic well enough to talk about it properly.
• Strong written and spoken communication. Proposals, presentations and negotiation with senior decision-makers.
• South African work authorisation that you already hold. South African citizenship, permanent residence, or a Critical Skills Work Visa. Foreign nationals are welcome on that basis. The client does not sponsor.
• Availability to be in the Sandton office continuously for the first three months for the training programme.
• Willingness to complete background and reference checks before an offer.

Useful extras

• You have personally scoped a technical engagement before a statement of work or a price existed.
• Technical depth in communicating across penetration testing, red teaming, digital forensics or cloud security.
• Existing relationships with South African security buyers.
• Selling into banking, insurance, telecommunications, energy or another large regulated sector.
• A practitioner-to-commercial path. Consultant, solutions engineer, presales, engagement manager or delivery lead who moved into a commercial seat.
• Experience in a consultancy or specialist business of roughly 250 people or fewer, where the seller owns their own pipeline.
• Visibility in the security community through speaking, writing or conference involvement. This is a research-led business, and that mirrors the team.
• Comfort with three to nine-month sales cycles and engagements in the mid-six to low seven figures in rand.
• Willingness to travel occasionally within Africa.

Work arrangement

• First three months office-based five days a week, for a structured twelve-week training and on-boarding programme.
• After that, hybrid. Johannesburg-based employees are in the Johannesburg office every Monday. Employees based in Cape Town or elsewhere spend one full working week in the office each quarter.
• Additional office or client attendance as engagements require.
• Occasional travel across South Africa and wider Africa.

Package and development

• Package will be discussed during the Clearing Call with RedHerd
• A twelve-week structured training and onboarding programme in the office.
• Three-month probation.
• An allocated portfolio and an approved sales budget from day one. Accounts and headcount already exist.
• Ongoing mentorship alongside experienced technical consultants.

Process and verification

1. Apply on the Job Page. Please submit your CV and answer all the Q&A's
2. Clearing Call with RedHerd to discuss your application and the Role.
3. Telephonic interview with the hiring manager, covering your background and why the role interests you.
4. Second interview with the hiring manager and the CEO, working through scenarios. Expect questions on how you decide to cut ties with an account, your forecasting process and your approach to client retention. Both commercial craft and cybersecurity understanding are assessed.
5. Psychometric assessment.
6. A research-based scenario, prepared and presented. You are given a client situation and asked what you would recommend. This tests research, structure and presentation, not hands-on practitioner skill, and you are told the brief in advance.
7. Background and reference checks before any offer is made.

If your CV cannot describe your work in detail because of client confidentiality, describe your own contribution and the shape of the engagement without naming customers or disclosing sensitive information. We would rather read that than a thin CV.

Why this role

• Working for a company that is truly vested in the cybersecurity community with extensive conference attendance, support, sponsoring and CFP acceptance rates. 
• An established portfolio, an approved budget and allocated headcount. This is not a seat you have to build from nothing.
• More inbound demand than the team can currently cover.
• Specialist security services rather than generic product, sold alongside consultants who are genuinely good at the work.
• Uncapped commission from month one.
• A structured twelve-week onboarding rather than being handed a target and a laptop.
• A respected, independent, research-led business with a real name in the market.

Equal opportunity

Applications are considered against the skills, experience, location and verification requirements of the role. RedHerd and our clients are committed to a fair and respectful process and do not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic.