Intake Product Manager, Cisco Validated

Cisco; North Carolina; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco is seeking a Product Manager for Cisco Validated Intake to act as the central intake point for strategic and technical requests. You will help cross-functional stakeholders clarify opportunities, assess alignment to CV priorities, and prepare work for progression through validation gates.

You will translate qualified opportunities into actionable validation recommendations, maintain the CV roadmap, and guide initiatives through gates, ensuring clear ownership, outcomes, and success

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 8+ years of industry experience.
• 8+ years in product management or related cross-functional roles.
• Experience managing formal intake, prioritization, stage-gate progression, and lifecycle progression for complex initiatives.
• Experience translating ambiguous requests into clear opportunities, recommendations, scopes, outcomes, dependencies, and decision points.
• Experience guiding cross-functional work across product, engineering, technical marketing, architecture, sales, content, or leadership stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Manage the central intake, triage, and prioritization of Cisco Validated opportunities.
• Conduct discovery with stakeholders to clarify opportunity, outcome, alignment, value, and required capabilities.
• Translate qualified requests into validation recommendations with clear scope, owners, success criteria, evidence, dependencies, exclusions, and outputs.
• Guide opportunities through intake and validation gates, prepare review materials, coordinate input, and track actions and decisions.
• Maintain the Cisco Validated roadmap from intake through gate progression, validation execution, publication, and lifecycle review.
• Coordinate cross-functional handoffs and maintain visibility as work moves through execution and publication.
• Improve intake practices, gate criteria, templates, and operating mechanisms based on lessons learned.

Skills

Intake management

Cross-functional collaboration

Strategic thinking

Communication

Prioritization

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 10/29/2026 Preferred candidates should be located in Raleigh, NC or Atlanta, CA or San Jose, CA.

Meet the Team

Join Cisco Validated, the team responsible for turning Cisco's integrated technology strategy into field-credible, evidence-backed proof. Cisco Validated has long helped customers, partners, and field teams deploy with confidence through tested designs, deployment guidance, and validated architectures. As Cisco's portfolio becomes more integrated, the team is evolving to validate not only individual designs, but also the cross-portfolio outcomes Cisco presents to the market.

As Product Manager, Cisco Validated Intake, you will serve as a central intake point for strategic and technical requests. You will help cross-functional stakeholders clarify opportunities, assess alignment to Cisco Validated priorities, maintain the CV roadmap, and prepare work for progression through the validation gates.

Your Impact

As Product Manager, Cisco Validated Intake, you will expand Cisco Validated's capacity to identify and develop cross-portfolio validation opportunities. You will help stakeholders clarify the opportunity, intended outcome, strategic alignment, customer or field value, and required capabilities.

You will translate qualified opportunities into actionable validation recommendations and guide them through the Cisco Validated gates. Your work will maintain a clear roadmap of candidate and active initiatives, improve visibility into priorities and dependencies, and help the team focus its technical resources on the highest-value opportunities.

You will partner with Cisco Validated TMEs and cross-functional stakeholders to ensure requests are sufficiently defined, aligned to Cisco Validated priorities, and ready for review. Responsibilities include:

• Manage the central intake, triage, and prioritization of Cisco Validated opportunities.
• Conduct discovery with stakeholders to clarify the opportunity, intended outcome, strategic alignment, customer or field value, and required capabilities.
• Translate qualified requests into validation recommendations with clear scope, owners, success criteria, evidence expectations, dependencies, exclusions, and target outputs.
• Guide opportunities through the Cisco Validated intake and validation gates, preparing review materials, coordinating stakeholder input, and tracking actions and decisions.
• Maintain the Cisco Validated roadmap from initial intake through gate progression, validation execution, publication, and lifecycle review.
• Coordinate cross-functional handoffs and maintain visibility as approved work moves through execution and publication.
• Improve intake practices, gate criteria, templates, and operating mechanisms based on lessons learned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 8+ years of industry experience or Master's degree with 4+ years of industry experience.
• 8+ years of experience in product management, product operations, portfolio management, technical operations, or related cross-functional roles.
• Experience managing formal intake, prioritization, stage-gate progression, and lifecycle progression for complex initiatives.
• Experience translating ambiguous requests into clear opportunities, recommendations, scopes, outcomes, dependencies, and decision points.
• Experience guiding cross-functional work across product, engineering, technical marketing, architecture, sales, content, or leadership stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical fluency with complex technology portfolios, preferably including the Cisco portfolio.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with shifting priorities and cross-functional dependencies.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations, actions, and status updates.
• Working knowledge of the Cisco portfolio and cross-portfolio solution initiatives.
• Experience supporting product discovery, portfolio prioritization, or roadmap planning.
• Proven ability to influence without direct authority across product, technical, content, sales, and leadership stakeholders.

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, o