Director, Cybersecurity Solutions Engineering - Hypershield - US East

The Global Security Technical Incubation and Velocity team has two distinct focuses: building the technical sales process for new and innovative products, and leading global Security technical teams. The Security Sales Engineering team is seeking a dynamic and experienced leader to drive their Technical Incubation strategy and execution. This team operates like a startup with unique access to Cisco's resources, industry leadership, and scale. Cisco Security consistently launches innovative products to help customers adopt more effective defenses against sophisticated cyber threats.

As an Engineering Leader, you will lead and develop a team of product and solution-focused leaders to strategically evolve technical support for an ever-expanding portfolio. You will drive the Technical Incubation strategy and execution within the Security Sales Engineering team.

• Strategic Incubation and Velocity Vision and Leadership: Lead, mentor, and develop a globally dispersed team of elite Solution Engineers. Cultivate a culture of inclusivity and excellence to attract and retain top engineering talent. Provide regular career development support and set clear expectations for team members. You will lead our Private Preview customer and partner engagements, directly responsible for in-field deployment and success of new product offers. Evangelize and enable the wider Cisco SE and Partner SE teams across the region.
• Proactive Technical Sales Support: Collaborate with the Technical Enablement teams to develop training plans, ensuring team members are well-equipped to drive new product introduction and growth. Support initiatives such as SE Summits, Technical Advisory Groups, and Champions Programs to foster a robust technical community. Develop and execute technical sales strategies that improve Cisco's opportunities in the customer environment. Work with Security Sales Org and BU leadership to define initiatives that optimize growth and market share for Cisco's Secure Access Platform. Strategize and create programs, events, workshops, and technical showcases to accelerate new products and initiatives. Develop tools and processes to enhance the See -> Try -> Buy motion, including demos, proof of values (POVs), and health checks. Regularly interact with Cisco teams and external partners to capture market opportunities and address challenges arising from continued transformation. Provide thought leadership based on short and long-term business and industry drivers. You will apply a hunting mentality to generate pipeline and revenue for new products with a thoughtful strategy for new and existing Cisco Security customers across an assigned territory.
• Technical Expertise and Customer Engagement: Act as the highest field escalation resource for the SE team and potential prospects for technical product questions, demos, trials/POVs, and pre-sale customer issues during the sales cycle. Deliver technical presentations along with sales staff via web conferencing or in-field to prospective C-level audiences and technical decision-makers. Be available as a competitive expert to assist with product positioning and customer opportunity success. Provide essential input and responses to assist with major RFIs/RFPs. Assist with delivery of new product features as they are introduced. Participate in formal Early Adoption and Private Preview programs to thoroughly test new technologies, providing feedback to Product and Engineering teams. You will work directly with Product Management as a liaison to accounts around technical product requirements and to help provide customer feedback with the goal of enabling continuous improvement. Effectively interact with internal engineering teams to scope and provide solutions to complex technical issues for highly visible customer and market opportunities. Assist in the development of tools such as Demos, Workshops, Trial and POV best practices by creating content, giving demos and running labs in support of various events.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Build strong partnerships with internal stakeholders, including sales, engineering, product management, and finance teams, to align on goals and drive joint success. Act as a key interface between sales and BU teams to ensure timely resolution of product issues and enhancements. Cultivate strong executive relationships with customers and partners and engage directly in the market opportunity pipeline to drive transformative security and differentiation for Cisco.

• Experience with networking, segmentation, network security, threat detection and response, SSE, and SASE.
• Experience building and maintaining cross-business relationships with product management, product marketing, technical marketing, customer success, and across the pre-sales organization.
• Solid mastery of LAN, WAN, Cloud Security (L4-L7, FWaaS, IPS, DNS Security, VPN etc.) technologies.
• 8+ years of technical experience as a pre-sales engineer, network operations support, or application engineering role.
• 8+ years of enterprise pre-sales experience working directly with network, cloud security and/or micro-segmentation products in a customer-facing role.
• Skills across data center networking, firewalls, Application and Network Segmentation strategies (Macro & Micro), Container Security and Orchestration platforms.

• Foundational understanding of cloud security, cloud service providers, containers, and container orchestration.
• Proven track record of initiating programs that improve pipeline generation, sales success, and customer experience to boost Cisco's brand loyalty.
• Understanding of competitive products such as Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, VMware, Illumio, Guardicore (Akamai) Networks, with the ability to articulate Cisco differentiators.
• Strong knowledge of cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and container technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker).
• Deep understanding and familiarity with competing market-leading micro-segmentation products.
• Strong understanding of networking protocols and technologies, including switching, routing, and security.
• Familiarity with security principles related to microservices architecture and serverless computing.

Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis.
Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

At Cisco, we're revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era - and beyond. We've been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Simply put - we power the future.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you'll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.