Cisco Careers

Cisco Sales team is seeking a Senior Systems Architect. The ideal candidate will assist the account team to develop solutions for Verizon as the customer with their nationwide network. The objective of the candidate is to position Cisco solutions to help Verizon to deploy 5G based services.  The position requires collaborative approach to meeting customer requirements by applying wide array of Cisco technologies and solutions. 

This role has three main aspects.  1. Building relationship with customer to collect and understand the 5G and RAN requirements.  2.  Working with the BU/ TG to qualify the Cisco solutions to meet requirements that meet customer’s business objective and timelines. 3. Architectural selling by collaborating, developing, demonstrating and evangelizing Cisco solutions and services to deliver    

Qualify Opportunities:

• Help document customer business problem and timelines
• Research and refine technical requirements of the customer business problem
• Work with TG and Engineering team to define solution options and articulate the benefits of the Cisco options
• Document the detail functional requirements and operational considerations
• Assist in tracking development and 
• Recommend CX Services for successful deployment of the solution
• Understand and evangelize Cisco’s NGN /SDN /NFV strategy and executive messaging to key customers at Verizon

Solution and Architectural Positioning:

• Maintain & develop an expert understanding of the 3GPP and other Standards applicable to RAN and Backhaul architectures 
• Ensure the features, benefits, and architectural impact of Cisco solution are understood and valued by customer
• Validate the business case of architectural solution
• Demonstrate expert knowledge in IP/MPLS and Segment Routing and SRv6 technology   
• Keep up-to-date on relevant solutions, products and services from competing vendors.
• Ability to demystify complex technologies and disciplines 
• Conversant at executive levels (Exec Dir + VP level dialogues)
• Ability to present to large, diverse crowds
• Help the Account Team identify potential gaps in Verizon’s network to create opportunities to enlarge the sales base
• Document feature requirements, maintain product roadmaps and alignment between the customer and Cisco solutions 
• Conduct architecture workshops with customers, evangelize technical strategy and influence customer base 
• Provide technical expertise and lead customer discussions during planning, design and engineering phases 

Collaboration and Transitioning:

• Establish key relationships inside of Cisco Massive Infrastructure Group (MIG) 
• Participate, arrange Demo(s), Proof of Concepts and/or presentations with customers
• Collaborate, educate and communicate with teams such as Cisco Advanced Services to transition projects from pre-sales to deployment and production stages
• Participate in Standardization effort and forums ( O-RAN alliance, 3GPP,  IETF, IEEE, OIF, MEF and others)
• Partner with Verizon Distinguished Engineers on RFCs, standards, and non-standard developments
• Bring new ideas to Vz and advise on industry trends
• Actively participate as a specialist on assigned Virtual Team and provides consultative support in their area of specialization to other Systems Engineers

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Comp Sci./ EE / Information Technology or relevant field with 5 Years of Professional Experience
• Service Provider Networking Experience with either design, deployment or operations of Large Scale IP / MPLS Networks
• Hands-on knowledge of Cisco IOS-XR for Routing, QoS, OSPF, BGP and Multicast for IPv4 and IPv6 protocols
• Experience in deploying IP/MPLS applications such as L3VPNs, L2VPN, Traffic-Engineering and Multicast
• Expert Understanding of Services and Architectures commonly implemented across Service Providers
• Effective written and oral communication skills
• Excellent presentation skills
• JNCIE / CCIE Certification

Desired Qualifications:

• Graduate Degree in Comp Sci./ EE / Information Technology or relevant field and 3 Years of Professional Experience
• Working knowledge of MSOffice and Visio applications
• Familiarity with Optical technologies including SONET, ROADM, DWDM, OTN / G.709 and GMPLS
• Understanding of protocols such BGP-LS, PCEP and Label Switched Multicast (LSM)
• Working knowledge of Management protocols such as SNMP, Netflow and NetConf to interface with NMS applications
• Strong Linux administration skills, and versatile in console commands, scripting and utilities (PERL, Python, BASH, etc.) 
• Working knowledge of OpenStack, Open vSwitch (OVS), OVSDB, SDN controllers (e.g. OpenDaylight) and OpenFlow and REST APIs 
• Experience with at least two virtualization hypervisors (KVM, Xen, ESXi, Hyper-V)
• Knowledge of Data Center technologies such as Ethernet Switching, IEEE 802 protocols, VLAN and Overlay tunneling protocols such VXLAN, NVGRE / STT 
• Ability to read Java, Python, C/ C++ code