Director, Environmental Sustainability Management

Director, Environmental Sustainability Management

Meet the Team

Cisco's Chief Sustainability Office works across the company to advance our environmental sustainability strategy, deliver our goals and help translate complex environmental and technology challenges into informed business decisions.

Our team brings together expertise across net zero, circularity, product sustainability, engineering and supply chain enablement, environmental data and analytics, reporting and disclosure, and stakeholder engagement. Our leaders and teams have deep knowledge of their areas and are responsible for turning Cisco's sustainability priorities into action.

At the same time, the questions we face are becoming more complex and interconnected. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure is changing energy demand, technology systems and resource requirements. Energy markets are evolving, new constraints are emerging across supply chains and materials, and the assumptions underpinning long-term environmental strategies continue to change.

We are looking for a Director, Environmental Sustainability Management, to strengthen our ability to understand these developments and determine what they mean for Cisco.

Reporting directly to the Chief Sustainability Officer, you will work across the Chief Sustainability Office and broader Cisco organization, combining deep subject-matter expertise, quantitative analysis and external insight to help teams investigate complex questions, evaluate different approaches and develop credible strategies and recommendations.

Your Impact

As Director, Environmental Sustainability Management, you will serve as a strategic and analytical partner to the Chief Sustainability Officer and leaders across Cisco.

You will bring deep analytical capability and specialist expertise to questions where technology, energy, environmental and business considerations intersect, particularly where the evidence is evolving, assumptions need to be tested, or where teams would benefit from deeper research, modelling and scenario analysis.

Your initial focus will include Cisco’s updated Sustainability Strategy, AI and digital infrastructure and Cisco's Energy Resilience priority. You will help Cisco understand how changes in technology, energy and resource systems could affect its sustainability and business strategy and turn that understanding into actionable choices.

You will:

• Work across the Chief Sustainability Office and Cisco including with supply chain, product engineering, government affairs, workplace resources, sales and other teams to understand emerging developments, bring together different perspectives and evidence, and translate them into strategic implications, options and recommendations
• Strengthen priority sustainability workstreams with additional analytical depth, helping teams test assumptions, develop scenarios, evaluate emerging technologies and understand how changes in the external environment could affect their strategies and plans.
• Develop Cisco's perspective on the environmental implications of AI and digital infrastructure, including energy demand, greenhouse gas emissions, infrastructure requirements, materials, circularity and other lifecycle impacts across hardware, software, networks and supporting infrastructure.
• Analyze developments in energy systems and electricity markets, including demand growth, data center expansion, generation, grid constraints, technology economics and investment dynamics, and assess their implications for Cisco's sustainability, technology and business strategies.
• Support Cisco's net-zero strategy through quantitative analysis and scenario modelling, examining how technology adoption, business growth, energy-system developments and other external factors could affect emissions pathways, assumptions and strategic choices.
• Assess interactions between technology, energy, supply chains and resource demand, including critical materials and circularity, to identify emerging risks, opportunities, dependencies, trade-offs and unintended consequences.
• Develop, commission and apply rigorous models, scenarios and analytical frameworks to evaluate environmental impacts and competing strategic approaches, applying appropriate baselines, lifecycle boundaries, attribution methods and sensitivity analysis and making uncertainty explicit.
• Translate complex scientific, technical, economic and policy evidence into decision-ready recommendations, helping senior leaders understand what matters, what is known, what remains uncertain and what choices Cisco can make.
• Provide constructive analytical challenge to strategies, proposals and sustainability claims, helping teams identify weak assumptions, test whether expected outcomes are supported by the evidence and strengthen the credibility and defensibility of their work.
• Build relationships with leading researchers, institutions, customers and industry experts to bring external insight into Cisco, test emerging hypotheses and identify opportunities for collaboration.
• Represent Cisco selectively in research collaborations, industry initiatives, standards organizations and expert forums, strengthening Cisco's technical credibility and contributing to external discussions where the company has meaningful expertise and evidence to offer.

The portfolio will evolve as Cisco's priorities and the external landscape change. You should be comfortable moving between subjects, developing expertise quickly and working alongside different teams depending on where your analysis and perspective can have the greatest impact.

Minimum Qualifications

• Degree in engineering, physical or environmental sciences, economics, energy systems, computer science, public policy or another relevant quantitative or technical discipline, or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
• Deep expertise across at least two of the following areas, with demonstrated experience connecting them: AI, computing and digital infrastructure; energy systems and markets; climate, net zero and environmental impacts. Additional expertise in one or more of the following is preferred: circular economy; lifecycle assessment; electronics supply chains; or critical raw materials.

• Demonstrated external recognition as a subject-matter expert at the intersection of digital infrastructure, AI, energy and environmental sustainability, evidenced by one or more of the following: authorship or formal peer review of influential research or publications; leadership roles in respected institutions, industry initiatives or consortia; significant contributions to standards or policy; or comparable externally scrutinized work.

• Significant experience conducting quantitative analysis, modelling, scenario development or strategic research related to energy, climate, digital technologies, environmental impacts, resource systems or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated ability to structure ambiguous and complex problems, identify the questions that materially affect a decision and develop rigorous analytical approaches to address them.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex scientific, technical or economic analysis into strategic options and recommendations for senior decision-makers.
• Experience developing or interpreting quantitative models and scenarios and working with incomplete or uncertain data, including clearly communicating assumptions, sensitivities and limitations.
• Experience working effectively across disciplines and organizational boundaries, collaborating with subject-matter experts and influencing outcomes without relying on formal authority.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to make complex technical analysis accessible and relevant to executive and expert audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree, PhD or equivalent advanced analytical experience in a relevant technical, scientific, energy, economics or policy discipline.
• Deep understanding of the relationship between AI, computing and digital infrastructure and energy systems, emissions, materials and other environmental impacts.
• Experience developing or applying models related to electricity demand, energy systems, data centers, digital technologies, greenhouse gas emissions, net-zero pathways, lifecycle impacts or material demand.
• Knowledge of electricity markets, energy-system investment and the infrastructure implications of growing digital and data-center demand.
• Knowledge of critical materials, technology supply chains, circularity and the resource implications of emerging technologies.
• Experience developing strategies or recommendations that required balancing environmental evidence with technical feasibility, economics, customer requirements, commercial considerations and organizational constraints.
• Experience working with leading research institutions, policymakers, standards organizations, industry associations, customers or other expert communities.
• Experience representing an organization externally on complex or emerging technical issues and communicating with both specialist and non-specialist audiences.
• Ability to learn unfamiliar subject areas quickly, challenge conventional thinking constructively and exercise sound judgement where evidence is incomplete, contested or changing rapidly.

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.