Cisco
Networking hardware, security software, collaboration services
MSP Sales & Go-to-Market Lead - MEA-TRC East, Splunk
Hybrid work arrangement in Dubai.
About the job
- Extensive experience working with managed service providers, managed security service providers, service providers, cloud providers, or technology partners.
- Deep understanding of the regional managed service provider and managed security service provider landscape, business models, customer requirements, and competitive dynamics.
- Demonstrated success in sales, business development, partner development, or go-to-market roles.
- Proven ability to translate regional strategies into executable partner and sales plans.
- Strong understanding of recurring-revenue, consumption-based, managed-service, and partner-led business models.
- Experience developing and launching partner-led managed services or technology-based service offerings.
- Strong commercial acumen and experience supporting complex pricing, contracting, and negotiation discussions.
- Ability to influence stakeholders across partner, sales, technical, executive, regional, and global teams without direct ownership.
- Strong pipeline management, forecasting, business-planning, and executive communication skills.
- Fluency in English is required.
- Develop and execute the regional managed service provider sales and go-to-market plan aligned with the overall EMEA managed service provider strategy and regional business priorities.
- Ensure priority partners have a clear managed service provider strategy and execution plan embedded within broader partner plans.
- Support partner managers in defining managed service provider growth plans, revenue ambitions, enablement requirements, service-development priorities, and joint go-to-market activities.
- Build a scale plan to expand the regional managed service provider ecosystem by onboarding new partners, growing existing capabilities, and driving new customer acquisition.
- Identify priority markets, customer segments, industry verticals, and managed service provider propositions with strong scalable-growth potential.
- Maintain understanding of regional market dynamics, competition, regulation, customer demand, and emerging managed-service trends.
- Support and drive managed service provider sales and business development activities with partner managers and sales teams.
- Develop campaigns and initiatives that create managed service provider pipeline, generate new logos, and support recurring-revenue growth.
- Maintain visibility of the regional managed service provider pipeline and review progress, performance, and execution with sales and partner teams.
- Support joint account planning and opportunity development with strategic managed service provider partners.
- Align priorities with regional and global managed service provider sales teams, share best practices, and accelerate strategic opportunities.
- Support complex managed service provider opportunities and collaborate with the EMEA team to remove commercial, operational, contractual, or organizational barriers.
- Ensure partner ownership, execution accountability, and opportunity follow-up remain assigned to the relevant partner and sales teams.
- Lead regional adoption and execution of the Splunk managed service provider program.
- Act as the regional managed service provider subject-matter expert and program advocate across partner and sales organizations.
- Advise internal teams and partners on managed service provider commercial models, pricing, contracting, licensing, and partner economics.
- Educate and enable sales, partner, and technical teams on the managed service provider route to market and program execution.
- Work with the EMEA managed service provider team to identify program improvements addressing regional market needs.
- Partner with the managed service provider Partner Technical Manager to ensure regional plans are technically aligned and supported by required enablement, service-development, and delivery capabilities.
- Build relationships with managed service provider stakeholders across executive leadership, sales, technical, service-development, operations, and marketing teams.
- Support partners in developing and launching differentiated Splunk-powered managed services.
- Help ensure Splunk is designed into partners’ service catalogues across security, observability, infrastructure monitoring, and digital resilience.
- Support development of partner value propositions, business cases, sales plays, campaigns, and customer-facing propositions.
- Align with regional sales directors, regional sales managers, assistant vice presidents, partner leadership, and other senior stakeholders.
- Work with partner managers, marketing, legal, finance, operations, and EMEA and global managed service provider teams.
- Prepare and deliver managed service provider business reviews and updates to regional, EMEA, and partner leadership teams.
- Support commercial discussions and negotiations with managed service provider and managed security service provider partners.
- Work with EMEA managed service provider, legal, finance, pricing, operations, and deal-desk teams to develop scalable, commercially viable agreements.
- Help resolve complex pricing, licensing, contractual, and route-to-market considerations.
- Apply commercial judgment and negotiation skills to accelerate strategic opportunities.
- Knowledge of security, observability, infrastructure monitoring, cloud, or digital-resilience markets is highly desirable.
- Arabic or another relevant regional language would be an advantage.
About the company
Cisco designs and sells networking hardware, software, and services that help organizations connect, protect, and manage data. Its products include networking gear, security solutions, cloud services, and collaboration tools like Webex to support hybrid work. Cisco differentiates itself with a broad, integrated stack—routing and switching, security, cloud, and collaboration—that works together at scale. Its goal is to help customers securely connect people, devices, and applications, enabling reliable communication and digital transformation across enterprises of all sizes.
Company Size
10,001+
Company Stage
IPO
Headquarters
San Jose, California
Founded
1984
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Cisco booked $9.3 billion hyperscaler AI orders in fiscal 2026, up 4.5 times.
- August 12, 2026 guidance targets $72.2 billion to $73.4 billion revenue for fiscal 2027.
- Cisco AI POD for Splunk and the Saudi HUMAIN partnership expand monetizable AI infrastructure.
What critics are saying
- Fiscal 2026 gross margin fell to 66.3%; hardware-heavy AI orders will compress 2027 margins.
- May 2026 layoffs of nearly 4,000 employees signal deeper restructuring and weak legacy growth.
- Arista and hyperscaler in-house networking can bypass Cisco, crippling AI revenue conversion by 2028.
What makes Cisco unique
- Cisco owns the enterprise network, plus Splunk telemetry, security, and collaboration in one stack.
- Cisco Silicon One and Cloud Control unify routing, observability, and agentic AI operations.
- Cisco's channel breadth and installed base keep campus refresh cycles sticky through 2027.
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Benefits
Paid Vacation
Hybrid Work Options
Flexible Work Hours
Professional Development Budget
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 0%1 year growth
↑ 0%2 year growth
↑ 0%Cisco Systems trades at 32.1 times earnings, nearly matching Dell Technologies' 31.9 multiple, despite growing revenue just 11.8% over twelve months compared to Dell's 49%. The valuation gap partly reflects Cisco's superior 25.4% operating margin versus Dell's 9.6%. The company's premium also anticipates faster growth ahead. Cisco secured $9.3 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers in fiscal 2026, 4.5 times the prior year's total, though revenue lagged at roughly $4 billion. For fiscal 2027, Cisco guides revenue between $72.2 billion and $73.4 billion, representing 15% growth. AI infrastructure revenue from hyperscalers is expected to reach $7.5 billion. However, price increases contributed 5 percentage points to Q4 growth and will add 4 to 5 points in fiscal 2027. Rising memory costs and hardware mix are pressuring gross margins.
Leading AI firms including OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI are calling for coordinated safety measures as autonomous AI agents demonstrate unexpected behaviour in testing. This has prompted enterprise CIOs to race to implement guardrails around their AI deployments. Companies are taking varied approaches to managing AI agent risks. Cisco centralised all AI agents on its MyAgent platform, which 90,000 employees use, whilst blocking third-party AI tools. Intuit built security and fraud monitoring directly into its GenOS system. Workday created an "agent system of record" to track all non-human identities. Not everyone supports slowing development. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argue firms should proceed rapidly but responsibly. President Trump called AI safety concerns "a hoax", whilst Congress has failed to advance any AI regulation. PwC's global chief AI officer warns enterprises must establish monitoring systems and tracking for AI agents, noting "'The agent made me do it' is not going to be a defence.
Cisco Systems closed fiscal 2026 with record revenue of $63.3bn, but the company's messaging shifted significantly between earnings calls. In August 2025, CEO pitched a major campus switching refresh cycle. By August 2026, the focus moved to hyperscaler AI infrastructure, with orders up triple digits. AI infrastructure for hyperscalers booked $9.3bn of orders in fiscal 2026, roughly 4.5 times the previous year's total. However, this represented only 6% of fiscal 2026 revenue, up from under 2%. Management projects $7.5bn from hyperscalers in fiscal 2027, about a tenth of total revenue. Campus networking remains healthy, with product orders growing 20% year-over-year in fiscal Q4 2026. Wi-Fi 7 comprised over half of wireless orders. The CFO estimates core growth at 10% for fiscal 2027 versus 15% company-wide.
Cisco has launched version 1.0 of Cisco AI POD for Splunk, enabling enterprises to run Splunk's AI capabilities within their own infrastructure. The package combines Cisco compute infrastructure, Nvidia GPU acceleration and Splunk software on Red Hat OpenShift. The system allows customers to deploy tools including AI Assistant and AI Toolkit whilst maintaining control over their OpenShift environment. Cisco shares traded about 1.5% lower at $110.395 on Monday. The move positions Cisco to capture infrastructure demand as enterprises shift AI workloads into production. However, the stock currently trades 48.38% above its GF Value estimate of $74.40, suggesting investors are already pricing in significant execution. Success will depend on whether customers deploy these systems at scale.
Ken Fisher's firm increased its stakes in Cisco Systems and Palo Alto Networks between March and June, according to regulatory filings disclosed in September. Fisher Asset Management's Cisco position rose from 17.3 million to 33.4 million shares, whilst its Palo Alto holdings jumped from 256,661 to 5.8 million shares. The two companies represent different approaches to AI infrastructure security. Cisco combines networking equipment with security software, reporting 28% growth in fiscal Q4 networking revenue to $9.8 billion and 14% growth in security revenue to $2.2 billion. Palo Alto focuses on security platforms, posting 34% revenue growth to $3.41 billion in its fiscal Q4, though it reported a $282 million GAAP net loss partly due to fair-value charges on acquired convertible notes. The filings do not explain Fisher's investment rationale.