Leader, Strategy & Planning Operations

This remote role is open to candidates in the United States, no relocation is available.

Meet the Team

Global Specialist Sales is standing up a formal Incubation organization to give Cisco's newest platforms and solutions a dedicated path from “0 to 1” — through customer proof points, GTM readiness, and eventual graduation into mainstream Portfolio or Hyper-Specialist coverage. Incubation is home to products including AI Defense, Cisco Cloud Control, Agentic Security, Multicloud Fabric, and other new product introductions (NPIs) as they come online. The Incubation Sales Vice President is building out a central team—including Sales, GSI/Partnerships, Distinguished Solutions Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineers, and Sales Planning & Operations (SP&O)—to lead each product’s transition through defined stage gates based on product-market fit, operational readiness, and alignment with Core.

Your Impact

As the Incubation SP&O Leader, you are the day-to-day operating partner to the Incubation Vice President and leadership team. You are responsible for building the “seller-facing plumbing” required to turn strategy into an executable go-to-market and sales operating model. This is a foundational role that requires defining processes from scratch, navigating a fast-changing product roadmap, and ensuring each Incubation product can scale from initial customer acquisition to a repeatable, successful motion.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy & Operating Partnership: Serve as a strategic sparring partner to the Incubation VP on GTM strategy, resourcing, and portfolio prioritization. Lead the SP&O operating cadence, including QBRs, forecast reviews, and leadership reporting.

• Go-to-Market Execution: Define GTM strategy and sales plays tailored to the product maturity curve. Build sales readiness for new products, including process design, tools, customer intake, and cross-functional onboarding.

• Governance: Support the stage-gate/graduation framework that governs a product’s path from Incubation to Core or Hyper-Specialist coverage, using data-driven criteria to assess readiness.

• Compensation, Coverage & Metrics: Determine comp plans and territory/coverage models in partnership with Finance. Define and supervise metrics to quantify success for both individual products and the function overall.

• Team Leadership: Hire, lead, and develop a team of 2–3 SP&O professionals. Set the quality bar for the team’s output and assign coverage across products, partnerships, and "flex" capacity for new-product readiness.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Represent Incubation SP&O in planning sessions with Central Global Specialist Sales, Business Entities (BE), Enablement, Finance, and Customer Experience (CX).

Minimum Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in sales strategy, sales operations, business/GTM planning, or an equivalent role, ideally within a technology or software sales organization.

• 5+ years experience crafting or coordinating sales compensation plans and territory/coverage models.

• Consistent track record of building GTM processes or sales motions from scratch, with a high degree of comfort in ambiguous and evolving environments.

• 4+ years experience partnering directly with senior sales leadership (VP-level or above) as a trusted operating partner.

• 2+ years of proven people leadership experience or clear readiness to lead a small team.

• Cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across product/BE teams, Finance, Enablement, and Partner organizations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Economics, or a related field.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience preparing high-level materials for executive audiences.

• Experience supporting a new-product-introduction (NPI), incubation, or early-stage/emerging-business function.

• Familiarity with Cisco's sales organization, systems, and planning cycles.

• Experience with GSI/strategic alliance or partner GTM motions.

• Background in security, cloud, or AI/infrastructure markets.

Why Cisco? 

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. 

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you. 

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

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks.  Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. 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 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.