Director, Partner Architectures and Engineering.

The Director, Partner Architectures and Engineering is responsible for developing partner engineering strategy to ensure partners of all types are capable to sell and deliver Cisco’s platform capabilities across our full portfolio and ensure customer adoption of our technologies across the customer lifecycle. The individual is also responsible for bringing together the Architecture specialist teams on cross-architecture initiatives and also set the foundational enablement strategy across all technologies.

This team will transform our partner technology practices in line with Cisco’s portfolio transformation by enabling partners to design, implement and deploy Cisco technologies, integrate with other solutions, support and build on top of our platforms, ensure adoption of the use cases and ensure they are able to sell these solutions to end customers. Working across Business Units, Architecture Specialists, other Solutions Engineering and ecosystem team and the Theater Sales Leadership, this role will help partners to develop differentiated practices and offers with the partners’ own unique value and services and sell them in the market.

To be successful, the individual would need to understand the evolving channel business model, transformation of Cisco’s technology portfolio and its impact on the partner ecosystem, as well as market dynamics and competitive environment. The Consultant would collaborate across the cross-functional teams theater and regional teams from Partner Sales, Architectures, SE organization, field sales teams, etc.

Roles and Responsibilities

1. Lead Cisco partner solutions engineers and manage support of partners in their development and implementation of Cisco technologies in the GTM of choice – including architecture partner solution engineers, managed services solution engineers as well as cross-architecture specialists.
2. Develop cross-architecture strategy and execution by working across all Architecture Specialist teams in areas such as Secure Networking, Secure AI ready infrastructure etc.
3. Present Cisco’s technology strategy on behalf of the Partner Sales Organization in external forums, partner events and engage in thought leadership with Partner CTOs.
4. Understand competitor’s positioning and capabilities and develop strategies and positioning on how Cisco can be successful against the competition.
5. Serve as company liaison on specific technical projects with partners especially.
6. Work with marketing and product managers to define new products that are also easy for partners to deploy. May provide product feasibility analysis in support of sales efforts with sales representatives.
7. Select, develop, and evaluate personnel to ensure the efficient operation of the partner engineering function.
8. Develop frameworks and methodologies for helping partners in evolving their overall Cisco technology and business practices.
9. Engage partners to build up new technology practices on Cisco’s platforms.
10. Work with partners on the customer use cases for the technology, where they can add value, how they make money and how to ensure adoption.
11. Develop partners’ capabilities to leverage the Cisco ecosystem of ISVs, industry consultants, cloud service providers to further add value to their customer offers.
12. Provide feedback and insights to the BU and Architecture teams on the partner requirements.
13. Develop a scalable approach for executing technology practice development engagements.
14. Conduct regular reviews with the theater sales and partner sales teams and other key functional groups to ensure execution of the practice development strategy.
15. Analyze and track partners performance against target metrics for the technology areas.
16. Be the escalation point for theaters/countries for work with Region and WW teams on timely resolution matters relating to the technology practices developed during the engagements.

Desired Skills and Qualifications

1. 15+ years experience in the IT/technology industry, preferably as a consulting technical or solutions architect or technology consultant working for vendors or the vendors’ channel.
2. Strong understanding of Cisco’s core technology portfolio in Networking, Security, Data Center and Collaboration - CCIE certification in one or more of these areas desired.
3. Sound knowledge of AI, hybrid cloud, containers and microservices desired. Proven experience in software development or API driven development also a plus.
4. Familiarity with competitive vendors’ solutions and offerings in the market.
5. Demonstrated leadership and ability to work cross-functionally across various organizations to drive outcomes - requires ability to influence without owning processes or organizations directly.
6. Experience leading large teams desirable. Proven ability to influence and lead in a highly matrixed model.
7. Excellent written, verbal communication, listening and presentation skills. Able to articulate complex ideas and strategies to people at all levels of the organization.
8. Background and understanding of product, service, and channels sales at Cisco or comparable experience from another company.
9. Track record of successful performance as a “change agent”.
10. Experience building actionable business plans based on a deep understanding of the market and execution levers.
11. Bachelor’s degree from a reputable university/college in a technical field.