Head of Solutions Engineering — AI-Driven Security

Cisco Systems; Greater London; On-site; GBP 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems in London leads an elite Solutions Engineering team for hyperscale security across EMEA and APJC. This senior role oversees a distributed engineering organization and works with Cisco's strategic partners to drive AI-native security architectures.

You will recruit, coach, and inspire engineers, shape the technical go-to-market and engage CISOs and CIOs. This is a high-visibility leadership role requiring strategic thinking and hands-on collaboration.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of technical pre-sales engineering experience in enterprise network security, cloud security, or data center infrastructure.
• 3+ years of formal people leadership or senior technical mentorship managing geographically distributed teams.
• Deep architectural mastery of micro-segmentation strategies, container security/orchestration (Kubernetes/Docker), and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong foundational knowledge of modern data center networking, firewalls, distributed dataplanes (eBPF/DPDK), and network segmentation.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Recruit, develop, and retain a high-performing, diverse team of elite Solution Engineers across EMEA & APJC.
• Partner with Sales and Product leadership to define and complete the technical go-to-market strategy, accelerating early-adopter customer acquisition.
• Serve as an executive technical sponsor, building trusted advisor relationships with CISOs, CIOs, and Platform Architects.
• Champion the end-to-end See-Try-Buy lifecycle, optimizing POV velocity, private previews, and multi-architectural proof-of-value trials.
• Act as the strategic field bridge to Engineering, channeling competitive intelligence and technical feature gaps into the product development lifecycle.

Skills

Pre-sales engineering

People leadership

Kubernetes

Docker

Cloud platforms

Enterprise security

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/EE/Cybersecurity

Tools

VMware NSX

Illumio

Guardicore

Palo Alto

Job description

Cisco Systems in London leads an elite Solutions Engineering team for hyperscale security across EMEA and APJC. This senior role oversees a distributed engineering organization and works with Cisco's strategic partners to drive AI-native security architectures.

You will recruit, coach, and inspire engineers, shape the technical go-to-market and engage CISOs and CIOs. This is a high-visibility leadership role requiring strategic thinking and hands-on collaboration.