Leader, Solutions Engineer

Cisco Systems Inc; Manchester; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems Inc. seeks a senior Solution Engineer leader to drive technical pre-sales across EMEA & APJC.

You will lead and grow a geographically distributed team, partner with Sales and Product to shape the technical GTM, and act as an executive sponsor to CISOs and CIOs, advancing See-Try-Buy initiatives and coordinating with Engineering on product feedback. You will bring 8+ years in enterprise pre-sales, deep micro-segmentation and cloud security expertise, and 3+ years of leadership,

Qualifications

• 8+ years of technical pre-sales engineering experience in enterprise security, cloud security, or data center infrastructure.
• 3+ years of formal people leadership or senior technical mentorship managing geographically distributed teams.
• Deep competitive expertise in micro-segmentation and workload security.

Responsibilities

• Recruit, develop, and retain a high-performing Solution Engineer team across EMEA & APJC.
• Partner with Sales and Product leadership to define and execute technical go-to-market strategy.
• Serve as executive technical sponsor with CISOs, CIOs, and Platform Architects.
• Champion end-to-end See-Try-Buy lifecycle and optimize POV velocity and trials.
• Act as strategic field bridge to Engineering and feed competitive insights into product lifecycle.

Skills

Technical pre-sales

Leadership

Enterprise security

Cloud security

DevSecOps knowledge

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in CS/EE/Cybersecurity/Info Systems

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

• 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.
  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., Experience leading technical 'incubation' or 'start-up' sales motions for innovative enterprise technologies.
• Deep competitive expertise in micro-segmentation and workload security (e.g., Illumio, Guardicore/Akamai, VMware NSX, Palo Alto, Fortinet).
• Familiarity with global regulatory/compliance frameworks (e.g., NIS2, DORA, GDPR, sovereign cloud requirements).
• Working knowledge of DevOps/DevSecOps pipelines, microservices, serverless computing, and CI/CD security controls.
• Regional language proficiencies (e.g., German, French, Spanish, Arabic).
  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. Cisco is an Affir... ???