Cisco Careers

The application window is expected to close on: 9/25/2025

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

The Legal, Innovation, and Strategy Team (LIST) at Cisco operates at the forefront of technological advancement and legal expertise, playing a pivotal role in crafting the company's strategic direction. This dynamic group is instrumental in providing critical legal guidance on new technologies such as AI, privacy, data governance, open source software, and intellectual property, while actively contributing to Cisco's multi-faceted innovation and M&A strategy. The team demonstrates sophisticated legal operations and technology to drive efficiency, anticipate the evolving regulatory landscape, and ensure Cisco's continued leadership and responsible growth in a constantly evolving global environment. By encouraging a culture of innovative thinking and redefining legal expertise into a strategic business advantage, LIST is central to enabling Cisco's mission – to power an inclusive future for all.

Your Impact

Combine your legal expertise, technical skill, and operational excellence to lead Cisco’s Privacy Legal and Operations functions within LIST. Reporting directly to Cisco’s Chief Privacy Officer, you will lead a team of attorneys, privacy professionals, and operations specialists to drive Cisco’s privacy and data regulatory strategy. You'll be at the forefront of a major legal and operational shift -- integrating AI and automation to free up you and your team to focus on high-stakes, sophisticated issues. Your work will have a tangible impact, ensuring global regulatory compliance, enabling market access, and helping to shape Cisco's strategic approach to data. This isn't just about running “check the box” compliance, it's about leading the industry with privacy and responsible data use as a business imperative. If you're a strategic leader with a passion for privacy, data, and technology, we want you on our team.

Key responsibilities for this role include:

• Serve as a legal and domain authority on global privacy and data laws and standards
• Lead a team of attorneys, subject matter authorities, and program managers to enable regulatory compliance, market access, and differentiation on privacy and data
• Develop and maintain privacy and data-specific contract language and templates, including Data Protection Agreements, Standard Contractual Clauses, Data Access Terms, and resolve negotiation critical issues
• Create, update, and implement privacy and data policies, notices, standards, playbooks, templates, and training consistent with global privacy and data frameworks
• Maintain Cisco’s enterprise-wide privacy certifications, such as the Global Cross Border Privacy Rules, Privacy Recognition for Processors, Data Privacy Framework, and Binding Corporate Rules
• Partner with Product Legal to guide privacy-forward, data centric product development; navigate the impact of evolving privacy and data related laws, rules, and regulations may have on our products and operations
• Advance Cisco’s commitment to developing sustainable, scalable, and ethical approaches to sophisticated privacy and data issues
• Mentor, sponsor, develop, and inspire team members – direct reports, peers, and partners

Minimum Qualifications

• Juris Doctor (JD) with active bar admission and extensive legal experience (12+ years), preferably with some in-house experience
• Deep subject matter expertise on global privacy and data standards and regulations; industry recognized certifications are a plus (e.g., CIPP/Europe, CISM, CDPSE, etc.)
• Experience handling and operationalizing legal requirements in line with business needs, priorities, and risk tolerance
• Strong leadership skills and proven track record motivating and leading teams to deliver pragmatic legal advice supporting optimal business results
• Excellent communication (at all levels, including SLT and ELT), negotiation/influence, collaboration, and problem-solving skills, with proven track record for working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment supporting multiple stakeholders and challenging needs

Preferred Qualifications

• Ability to build processes and programs to quickly identify and resolve low to medium-risks while identifying and increasing high-risk, sophisticated issues for subject matter expertise engagement, including, taking a proactive approach to exploring and implementing new AI tools and automation to improve efficiency and efficacy
• Excellent social, communication, and drafting skills (attention to detail) and ability synthesize/simplify sophisticated issues, influence, and lead across functions (legal, engineering, business, and operations) and levels
• Adept in working with ambiguity and demonstrated ability to successfully handle frequent changes in priorities, deadlines, workload, and conflicting demands
• A willingness and desire to learn, expand, explore, and grow with a focus on AI capabilities and acumen to drive adoption of new AI tool

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.