Description
The Client Executive owns Cisco's overall relationship with a leading global financial services firm and leads the cross-functional team that serves it.
This is a senior, account-level leadership role: you set the strategy, build executive trust, and make sure Cisco shows up as one team across sales, engineering, services and partners.
Responsibilities:
- Own the executive relationship. Build and sustain relationships with the client's technology, infrastructure, security and business leaders, and act as their trusted advisor on technology strategy.
- Set and run the account plan. Define a multi-year strategy and pipeline across networking, security, observability, collaboration, data center and AI infrastructure, and drive it through governance and forecast cadence.
- Lead the account team. Direct a matrixed team of sales, solutions engineering, services, customer experience and partner resources, and coach them to operate as one team.
- Drive cost and complexity out. Lead vendor-consolidation and total-cost-of-ownership conversations that lower spend while improving the experience of the people who use the technology.
- Separate signal from hype on emerging technology. Help leadership decide what is ready to deliver value now (for example AI infrastructure, zero-trust security and network automation) and what is not.
- Deliver at scale. Stand up the delivery and Day 2 support models that keep a complex, regulated, always-on environment running, and be the executive escalation point when it does not.
- Navigate commercial and contract complexity. Partner with Legal, Finance and Deal Desk on enterprise agreements, pricing and renewals across a global footprint.
- Represent Cisco leadership. Bring in Cisco executives, product teams and partners at the right moments, and coordinate the other technology providers in the client's ecosystem.
Requirements:
- 10+ years in enterprise technology sales, account leadership or client executive roles, including 5+ leading large, complex global accounts.
- A record of building executive-level relationships (CIO, CTO, CISO, infrastructure and business-unit leaders) at large enterprises.
- Experience leading matrixed, cross-functional teams without relying on direct authority.
- Fluency in enterprise networking, security, data center and cloud, with enough depth in emerging areas such as AI infrastructure to challenge and guide a client.
- Commercial acumen: you can structure and negotiate multi-year, multi-million-dollar agreements and manage forecast accuracy.
- Strong communication and executive presence, including comfort presenting to senior client and Cisco leadership.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
Preferred Experience:
- Prior work with global financial-services clients, including regulatory, resilience, data-sovereignty and third-party-risk requirements.
- Experience with cost-rationalization or vendor-consolidation programs.
- Familiarity with Cisco's portfolio and operating model (Global Enterprise Segment, Premier accounts, partner and services ecosystem).
- Experience working alongside systems integrators and other technology providers in a shared client program.
How Success is Measured:
- Executive relationships: sustained, documented engagement with the client's senior technology and business leaders.
- Large-deal and pipeline outcomes against the account plan, with accurate forecasting.
- Account-team health: clear roles, strong engagement and low regrettable attrition.
- Client experience: executive sponsor feedback and a measurable reduction in escalations.
- Quality of the multi-year account strategy, including cost-rationalization and emerging-technology roadmaps agreed with the client.
Benefits:
- Medical, dental and vision insurance
- 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
- Paid parental leave
- Short and long-term disability coverage
- Basic life insurance
- Paid time away (vacation, holidays, sick time)
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer