C

Cisco

Makes networking gear and security software

Sales Business Development Manager - Automotive

Full-TimeUpdated on 10/15/2026
No salary listed
Senior, Expert
Bachelor's, Master's, PhD
Nagoya, Aichi, Japan+1 moreMore locations: Minato City, Tokyo, Japan
Hybrid
Sales & Account ManagementBusiness Development & Partnerships

About the job

Requirements
  • A bachelor's degree and 7 years of related experience, or a master's degree and 4 years of related experience, or a PhD and 1 year of related experience.
Responsibilities
  • Identify short- and long-term sales opportunities and drive demand generation, business development, and proposal development as a subject-matter expert.
  • Build a qualified opportunity pipeline, cultivate new customer relationships, identify upsell opportunities, and partner with account teams to shape and close complex deals.
  • Develop technology-, solution-, and industry-based offerings and new consumption models aligned with customer needs and Cisco's business objectives.
  • Build and deepen relationships with new and existing customers and key decision-makers; identify stakeholders, customer priorities, upsell opportunities, and areas to expand Cisco's wallet share.
  • Lead discovery sessions and workshops to address complex customer needs and develop new opportunities, engaging beyond traditional IT organizations across engineering, research and development, manufacturing, vehicle software, connected services, mobility, and business strategy.
  • Identify and qualify short- and long-term opportunities across products, solutions, and geographies; conduct targeted prospecting and market research to uncover customer needs, industry trends, and competitive opportunities.
  • Build qualified pipeline and engage account teams for execution and closure; shape complex, multi-product deals by aligning technical, commercial, and customer requirements.
  • Tailor deal structures to meet customer timelines and objectives while aligning with Cisco's business goals.
  • Orchestrate cross-functional teams including account teams, business units, product, services, engineering, marketing, legal, finance, and partners.
  • Optimize customer relationship management and forecasting processes to improve pipeline quality and accuracy.
  • Develop automotive-industry opportunities and maximize Cisco's relevance across the vehicle lifecycle and automotive value chain.
  • Develop the automotive value proposition across connected-car connectivity, data exchange, cloud and edge integration, vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity, and connected-vehicle ecosystems.
  • Develop Cisco's value proposition for software-defined vehicles across vehicle, edge, cloud, networking, security, observability, data, and artificial-intelligence architectures.
  • Develop opportunities connecting vehicles and automotive customers with smart cities, intelligent transportation, mobility services, and connected infrastructure.
  • Identify opportunities in smart manufacturing, industrial networking, security, edge computing, artificial intelligence, and manufacturing transformation.
  • Identify opportunities across the vehicle lifecycle, from research and development, design, engineering, and manufacturing through sales, vehicle operation, connected services, after-sales, and end-of-life.
  • Expand Cisco's relevance across original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, manufacturing operations, dealers, mobility providers, technology partners, and other automotive ecosystem participants.
  • Develop new use cases, commercial approaches, and consumption models that accelerate customer adoption and create scalable revenue opportunities.
  • Act as an automotive-industry subject-matter expert, connecting customer strategy and emerging industry requirements with Cisco capabilities.
  • Provide structured market and customer feedback to Product and Engineering teams to influence future solutions and product enhancements.
  • Work across Cisco organizations to create integrated, cross-architectural offerings and convert emerging customer requirements into scalable solutions and business opportunities.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience or expertise in the automotive industry, connected car, software-defined vehicles, smart mobility, smart cities, automotive manufacturing, or related technology ecosystems.

About the company

Cisco makes the switches and routers that connect offices, data centers, and cloud services, and it also sells cybersecurity tools and Webex video meetings to businesses and governments. It was one of the first companies to sell routers that let different kinds of computer networks exchange data, and in 2000 it briefly became the world's most valuable company. Customers run its network gear, from Wi-Fi access points to AI data center systems, with Cisco software that sets up and secures the network, while its Splunk unit searches computer logs to catch outages and attacks. Cisco earns money from hardware sales, software subscriptions, and support contracts. It was founded in 1984 and is based in San Jose, California.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

San Jose, California

Founded

1984

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Cloud giants fuel growth: they ordered $9.3 billion of Cisco's AI gear in the year to July 2026, up 4.5-fold.
  • Stock awards gained value: Cisco shares rose 63% in the year to October 2026, four times the S&P 500's 15%.
  • Signed deals steady the business: Cisco had $46.7 billion of contracted sales still to deliver in July 2026, up 7%.

What critics are saying

  • Record sales didn't stop layoffs: Cisco cut nearly 4,000 jobs, just under 5% of staff, in May 2026.
  • Rivals lead in data center switches: in the June 2026 quarter, Nvidia held 20.4%, Arista 18.7% and Cisco 18.2%.
  • Hardware-heavy AI growth squeezes profit: Cisco's gross margin fell to 66.3% from 68.4% in the July 2026 quarter.

What makes Cisco unique

  • Cisco still sells the most network switches: it took 28.7% of worldwide switch sales in the June 2026 quarter.
  • Cisco designs its own networking chips: Microsoft and Alibaba signed on early for its Silicon One P200, launched October 2025.
  • Cisco trains future network engineers: its Networking Academy has taught over 28 million learners in 195 countries since 1997.

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Benefits

  • Paid Vacation
  • Hybrid Work Options
  • Flexible Work Hours
  • Professional Development Budget

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-1%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

0%
Yahoo Finance
Oct 15th, 2026
Cisco and NVIDIA back 400G USFP optical standard to quadruple AI data centre bandwidth density

Cisco Systems and NVIDIA have announced a collaboration to bring 400G optical technology to AI data centres. The partners plan to commercialise a new ultra small form factor pluggable (USFP) standard designed to quadruple bandwidth density. The companies aim to build an open hardware ecosystem with other optical and networking vendors, including TE Connectivity and Amphenol, to support large AI workloads. The move targets the wiring bottleneck that could cap AI infrastructure spending. Cisco, which has a market capitalisation of about $453.7b, faces competition from Arista and Juniper in AI networking, and analysts flag hardware mix and memory costs as a margin risk.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 14th, 2026
Cisco, General Mills and Coca-Cola: three value stocks for a market at 237% of GDP

With the Buffett indicator near 237%, a Simply Wall St screen points to three large companies it considers high-quality value stocks: Cisco Systems, General Mills, and Coca-Cola. Cisco generates about $63.3 billion from networking products and has a market value of roughly $454.7 billion. Its AI infrastructure orders outlook for fiscal 2026 has risen to about $9 billion, driven by demand from cloud providers. General Mills has a market value near $17.5 billion, with $10.4 billion of sales from North America Retail. It plans $750 million of cost savings in fiscal 2027 as part of a $3 billion programme through fiscal 2030. Coca-Cola generates about $50.1 billion from nonalcoholic drinks and is valued near $386.3 billion. Its zero-sugar variants grew by double digits. The screen found 28 more companies with similar traits.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 12th, 2026
Cisco shares fall 3.3% to $114.52 as Webex AI agents keep working after calls end

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) has added AI agents to Webex that keep working on tasks after a conversation ends. Its shares traded at $114.52 on October 12, down about 3.3%. The agents use a tool called Dialog, which links customer history, company data, and backend systems so they can pursue unresolved requests. Claude integration is planned. Splunk tracks agent activity, and Cisco AI Defense provides safeguards. Shares sit 52.15% above the $75.27 GF Value estimate from GuruFocus. Cisco must turn the agents into higher recurring revenue without letting implementation costs and human supervision erode the gains.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 12th, 2026
NVIDIA and Cisco unveil USFP optics with 400Gb/s lanes and 4x bandwidth density

NVIDIA and Cisco announced Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable (USFP), a new optical module for AI data centres, on October 12, 2026. They say it will be the first to support 400Gb/s-per-lane electrical signals, for capacity up to 12.8Tb/s. USFP offers 4x the bandwidth density and about 1.3x the power efficiency of 200Gb/s-per-lane modules. Operators can connect more computing systems without adding network tiers, while cutting networking's share of power use. The first transceivers will pack 16 full-duplex lanes in an octal small form factor-sized footprint, with 32 lanes or more planned. The companies are working with TE Connectivity and Amphenol on cages, connectors and modules. They plan an open industry specification through a community-led multi-source project.

PR Newswire
Oct 12th, 2026
Cisco and NVIDIA plan open 400G optics spec as Microsoft, Alibaba deploy P200 silicon

Cisco unveiled new chips, systems and optics for AI networks at the Open Compute Project Global Summit on October 12, 2026. With NVIDIA, it plans to create an open specification for Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable (USFP), a 400Gb/s-per-lane optical module. Cisco says USFP should deliver 4x the bandwidth density and 1.3x the power efficiency of 200Gb/s-per-lane optics. Microsoft and Alibaba have put systems powered by Cisco's 51.2T Silicon One P200 into production. The first systems using the 102.4T G300 chip are shipping to customers. Cisco also introduced the 51.2T G302 chip for top-of-rack switches, which it plans to ship before the end of 2026. Its Live Protect security feature for SONiC customers starts in mid-2027.