You are responsible for partnering with the BU and GTM teams to ensure market success of our incubated Cloud & AppSec products. This is a highly visible technical (pre-sales) position that supports the Product and Engineering Business Units, Sales and Field Engineering organizations, working directly with each of them, our partners, and prospective customers.
You will conduct technical presentations, set up demonstrations to explain features and benefits to customers. You will form relationships with our customer’s key decision-makers, positioning Cisco solutions aligned precisely to their requirements. As an advisor to the customer, you will craft architectures and configure products to meet their specific needs and be prepared to lead all technical aspects of pre-sales activities through to a successful deployment of our incubated technologies.
You must be highly accomplished in the areas of application security concepts, cloud security concepts, and more specifically the entire Cloud Application Security Development and Deployment lifecycle. You will possess skills across data center networking, firewalls, Application and Network Segmentation strategies (Macro & Micro), Container Security and Orchestration platforms.
Additionally, you will need knowledge of and to keep up to date on networking and software enablement, API’s and Network Programmability. You will work with a variety of technologies and will therefore need strong cross-functional teamwork and consultative skills. The capacity to demonstrate technical solutions and capabilities effectively and conduct multi-architectural Proof-of-Value (POV) tests is a must.
You are a self-starter, will act as an industry domain expert, and strive to help Cisco make customers for life.
Act as the highest field escalation resource for the SE team and potential prospects for technical product questions, demos, trials / POVs, and pre-sale customer issues during the sales cycle.
Deliver technical presentations along with sales staff via web conferencing or in-field to prospective C-level audience and technical decision makers.
Be available as a competitive expert to assist with product positioning and customer opportunity success.
Provide essential input and responses to assist with major RFIs / RFPs.
Assist with delivery and GTM of new Cloud Application Security product features as they are introduced.
Participate in formal Early Adoption and Private Preview programs to thoroughly test new technologies, providing feedback to Product and Engineering teams.
You will be expected to lead our Private Preview customer and partner engagements, directly responsible for in-field deployment and success of our new product offers.
Evangelize to and enable the wider Cisco SE and Partner SE teams across the region.
Participate in our Incubation Champions programs to assist in the delivery of technical training to other Cisco teams, including on-going training to the SE and Partner SE teams.
Work directly with Product Management as a liaison to accounts around technical product requirements and to help provide customer feedback with the goal of enabling continuous improvement of Cisco Cloud Application & Security solutions.
Effectively interact with internal engineering teams to scope and provide solutions to complex technical issues for highly visible customer and market opportunities.
Travel throughout the region to visit prospective customers
Assist in the development of GTM tools such as Demos, Workshops, Trial and POV best practices by creating content, giving demos and running labs in support of various events (internal, partner, customer).
Who You Are
7+ years of technical experience as a pre-sales engineer, network operations support, or application engineering role.
5+ years of enterprise pre-sales experience working directly with network, cloud security and/or micro-segmentation products in a customer-facing role.
Deep understanding and familiarity with competing market-leading micro-segmentation products.
Have a solid mastery of LAN, WAN, Cloud Security (L4-L7, FWaaS, IPS, DNS Security, VPN etc.) technologies.
Strong understanding of networking protocols and technologies, including switching, routing, and security.
Strong knowledge of cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and container technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker).
Familiarity with security principles related to microservices architecture and serverless computing.
Understanding of competitive products such as Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet, VMware, Illumio, Guardicore (Akami) Networks; ability to articulate Cisco differentiators.
Passion for helping customers and delivering satisfaction even when faced with nuanced and difficult situations.
A self-starter with a positive attitude and friendly outgoing personality.
Strong written and email etiquette skill.
Strong oral interpersonal skills, including the ability to present technical information in user-friendly language.
Ability to prioritize and work responsibly with or without direct supervision.