Solutions Designer

Cisco is seeking a Solutions Designer based in the Toronto area to work with public sector customers in the city and around the province of Ontario.

As a Solutions Designer, you will combine technical expertise, consultative engagement, and business acumen to help customers address complex operational and technology challenges.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Consultative Partnership: Act as a trusted technical advisor to Canadian public sector customers, applying architecture, delivery, and implementation expertise to align solutions with their mission, business, and operational objectives.
• Technical Sales Leadership: Partner with Account Executives and cross-functional teams throughout the pre-sales cycle.
• Discovery and Solution Alignment: Lead comprehensive discovery sessions to uncover mission-critical challenges, technical requirements, constraints, and desired outcomes.
• Strategic Roadmap Development: Collaborate across Cisco, customer, and partner teams to develop, document, and present clear technology roadmaps.
• Technology Leadership and Advocacy: Maintain current knowledge of Cisco technologies, industry trends, and emerging capabilities.
• Complex Problem-Solving: Draw on Cisco's broad portfolio and partner ecosystem to architect secure, resilient, scalable, and operationally practical solutions.
• Customer Influence and Business Value: Translate complex technical considerations into clear recommendations, architectural trade-offs, and business value.

Minimum Qualifications

• Minimum of 5+ years of professional experience in systems architecture, solution design, systems engineering, technical consulting, delivery, or implementation within enterprise environments.
• Completion of at least 3 large-scale, end-to-end solution architectures, implementations, or delivery leadership projects within enterprise, critical infrastructure, public sector, or regulated environments.
• Documented technical competency in at least two of the following domains: networking, security, data centre, collaboration, or observability.
• Experience delivering a minimum of 5 technical presentations or architecture reviews to audiences including technical teams, business stakeholders, and executive leadership.
• Experience producing written technical documentation, including customer requirements analyses, solution architecture diagrams, and actionable implementation roadmaps.
• A bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline, or a minimum of 14 years of combined education, formal certifications, technical training, and practical work experience.
• Current residency in the Toronto area, and availability to fulfill hybrid office, customer-site, and travel requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Minimum of 5+ years of professional experience providing technical services, solution architecture, or sales engineering for Canadian Public Sector accounts.
• Possession of at least one active industry-recognized certification, such as Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE), Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), or Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).
• Minimum of 3 years of hands-on configuration or architecture experience utilizing Cisco enterprise networking, security, or data centre portfolios.
• Completion of at least 1 project involving the design or implementation of AI infrastructure, AI workloads, or solutions across secure on-premises, hybrid, or cloud-connected environments.
• Minimum of 2 years of direct pre-sales or technical advocacy experience resulting in approved technical architectures or technology adoption strategies.
• Experience authoring at least 2 formal technology roadmaps or strategic architectural decision documents submitted to senior organizational stakeholders.
• Verified bilingual proficiency in English and French (reading, writing, and speaking).