Solutions Engineer Manager

  • Location:
    London, United Kingdom
  • Alternate Location
    Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Netherland
  • Area of Interest
    Engineer - Pre Sales and Product Management
  • Job Type
    Professional
  • Technology Interest
    Internet & Mass Scale Infrastructure
  • Job Id
    1432737

Meet the Team

As part of Cisco’s EMEA Internet & Mass-Scale Infrastructure team, you’ll collaborate with account teams, fellow engineers, and customers to define and deliver innovative solutions that set the benchmark for assurance, automation, switching, routing, optical, and SDN. You’ll act as a trusted advisor for customers and a source of thought leadership for the industry, contributing to Cisco’s prominence in the service provider market.

Your Impact:

We are seeking an inspirational and innovative Senior Solutions Engineering Leader to join our dynamic team. As a Solutions Engineering Leader you will be responsible for our automation and assurance team. You will lead a team of highly specialized Solutions Engineers engaging with our direct line of business to articulate Cisco's strategy, design & execute on combined automation assurance solutions in the field. This role requires extensive leadership experience, a deep understanding of automation and assurance technologies, and a strong ability to communicate sophisticated technical concepts to a diverse audience.

You'll have the ability to own the team that will develop and execute a solution lead business outcome strategy to achieve sales targets for products and services. Develop relationships with key decision-makers. You will need to travel as needed to meet with clients and attend industry events.

Who you are:

You work for a mid-to-large sized tech company, where you've been instrumental in driving the GTM strategy. You have a proven track record of leading large, distributed teams to success, ensuring alignment across multiple departments. You possess deep expertise in the Technology industry and key performance metrics. You excel in drawing insightful business conclusions from sophisticated data sets, and your strong executive-level presence enables you to present compelling recommendations and influence key internal and external stakeholders. You bring your authentic self to work, contributing to our inclusive and diverse environment.

Execute the technical vision and strategy for the Global I&MI solutions engineering team for the EMEA region: working closely with the EMEA Leader of I&MI Solutions Engineer, the Sales leader for I&MI, and the other I&MI Solutions Engineering Leaders to ensure alignment across both sales and engineering priorities. 

Minimum Qualifications:

  1. 10+ years of experience in assurance, automation, networking, including consulting, service implementation and operational expertise,
  2. 2+ years directly running a technology pre-sales engineering organization and leading cross functional teams
  3. Domain knowledge of service assurance, performance monitoring, routing, optical, optics, network automation, automation tools, SDN, ROADM, DWDM, metro core, access, edge, and aggregation network.
  4. Strong awareness and understanding of TWAMP, RON, SDN, SRv6, BNG, MPLS-SR, VxLAN, EVPN and ECMP.
  5. Must have strong proven track record of driving solutions engineering teams to success across fast changing technology landscape, with customer wins, thought leadership and ability to evangelize across various internal and external stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Cisco assurance (PCA), Network Automation portfolio e.g. Cisco Crosswork,
  • Establish key performance indicators for all direct reports that are geared towards the development of solutions based on customer architectures 
  • Preferred experience at developing the next gen demos, solution-focused collateral, messaging, and technical sales engagement motions for these solutions and scaling them globally. 
  • Experience at mentoring the field through enablement and field sales engagements. 
  • Preferred experience at developing content for and present at internal and customer facing events such as sales kick off, cisco live, MWC, generalist & specialist SE training events and ecosystem partner events. 
  • Gather and consolidate a global customer and Industry perspective to drive product strategy and roadmaps with product management, as well as technical messaging with marketing as the voice of the customer.
  • Basic understanding of NETCONF/YANG, REST, JSON, Network telemetry,
  • Strong understanding of AI/ML concepts, techniques & infrastructure (learning models, LLM, GenAI, AGI, NLP, neural networks, deep learning, AI Frameworks, GPU and DPU)
  • Understanding of automation tool sets (Ansible, Terraform, ROBOT) with a strong focus on DC switching and compute.
  • Solid knowledge of Network Automation and Assurance solutions and positioning including competitive landscape
  • Strong knowledge of customer networks, their current challenges, ability to act as consultant and guide the customers – particularly Service Providers, Large Enterprises, and/or Public Sector customers.
  • The candidate also needs to be willing to travel (up to 50%)
  • Understanding of scripting (Python, Perl, TCL, shell programming)
  • Must have strong written and verbal communication skills and be able to effectively articulate technology and product positioning to both business and technical users.
  • Must possess a strong focus on customer service and be able to establish and maintain strong relationships throughout the sales cycle,
  • CCNP, CCDP, CCIE are highly regarded.

#WeAreCisco

#WeAreCisco where every individual brings their unique skills and perspectives together to pursue our purpose of powering an inclusive future for all.

Our passion is connection—we celebrate our employees’ diverse set of backgrounds and focus on unlocking potential. Cisconians often experience one company, many careers where learning and development are encouraged and supported at every stage. Our technology, tools, and culture pioneered hybrid work trends, allowing all to not only give their best, but be their best.

We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference. Dedicated paid time off to volunteer—80 hours each year—allows us to give back to causes we are passionate about, and nearly 86% do!

Our purpose, driven by our people, is what makes us the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Helping our customers reimagine their applications, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals is what we do best. We ensure that every step we take is a step towards a more inclusive future for all. Take your next step and be you, with us!


Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings.

Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter.  Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

.75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

Share