C

Cisco

Makes networking gear and security software

Partner Account Executive

Full-TimeUpdated
No salary listed
Senior
Minato City, Tokyo, Japan
Hybrid
Sales & Account ManagementBusiness Development & Partnerships

About the job

Requirements
  • At least 5 years of successful sales experience in SMB and Mid-Market segments.
  • A proven track record in partner account management or channel sales.
  • The ability to develop business plans that balance partner priorities with Cisco’s strategic objectives.
  • The ability to navigate complex, matrixed, and geographically distributed organizations.
  • The ability to work autonomously in a fast-paced environment.
  • English reading and writing proficiency for global collaboration.
Responsibilities
  • Identify and recruit high-potential partners to expand market reach.
  • Develop and execute strategies to drive incremental business through existing partners and new acquisitions.
  • Analyze market trends and partner performance metrics to identify growth opportunities and operational improvements.
  • Define and own the Partner Go-to-Market strategy, focusing on technology adoption and penetration into new vertical markets within the Scale segment.
  • Own net-new logo acquisition targets and manage the partner’s overall profitability structure in alignment with the Cisco 360 Partner Program.
  • Cultivate and maintain trusted relationships with key partners, acting as their primary point of contact and providing prompt responses and proactive support.
  • Orchestrate coordination across internal Sales, Engineering, and Marketing organizations to align efforts and maximize partnership outcomes.
  • Partner with internal account teams to align messaging and synchronize sales efforts.
  • Collaborate with the Channel team to design and implement targeted campaigns that drive sales velocity.
  • Monitor campaign key performance indicators and effectiveness, iterating strategies to maximize return on investment.
  • Provide ongoing partner training and support through customer visits, demonstrations, and enablement workshops to improve partners’ sales capabilities and technical proficiency.
  • Lead sales activities, including strategy planning and pipeline management.
Desired Qualifications
  • At least 7 years of sales experience in SMB and Mid-Market segments.

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'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

6 month growth

-1%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

0%
The Register
Oct 28th, 2026
Cisco open sources Project Quarry to catch rogue AI agents before the next Hugging Face-style hack

Cisco has open sourced Project Quarry, a behaviour detection engine that monitors AI agents to help security teams stop rogue agents, like those in the Hugging Face hack. Quarry aims to give security teams a "shared language" for judging agent behaviour, much as Snort did for network traffic and YARA for malware. It analyses an entire agent session rather than single actions. One tool call may look harmless until the next step sends data to an attacker's server. Rules resemble Snort or YARA rules. The GitHub repository includes plugins for Claude Code, Codex and other MCP-compatible agents, plus a starter rule pack. Cisco says rules do not replace human oversight, but they help teams share patterns to review and test.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 27th, 2026
IBM, Digital Realty and Cisco offer AI growth with dividend yields of up to 2.9%

Three tech companies offer dividends well above the S&P 500 average of 1.1% while benefiting from artificial intelligence (AI) demand, according to The Motley Fool. IBM pays $6.76 per share yearly, a 2.7% yield, and has raised it for 31 straight years. It generated over $15 billion in free cash flow against $6.3 billion in dividends, though third-quarter revenue of $17 billion rose only 5%. Digital Realty Trust, a data centre operator, pays $4.88 per share, a 2.9% yield. Revenue in the first half of 2026 rose 29% to $1.9 billion. Cisco pays $1.68 per share, a 1.6% yield. Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $17 billion rose 18%, and the stock is up nearly 50% over the past year.

Associated Press
Oct 26th, 2026
Presidio integrates Cisco IQ with Presidio Advisor for AI-powered lifecycle management

Presidio, a global digital services and AI solutions provider, has integrated Cisco IQ with its Presidio Advisor platform. The move combines Cisco's AI-powered operational intelligence with Presidio's multi-vendor approach to IT lifecycle management. It was announced on October 26, 2026. Using new Cisco IQ open APIs and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Presidio Advisor pulls real-time Cisco telemetry, lifecycle milestones, and support data into its platform. This removes manual data extraction. Presidio Advisor merges customer, reseller, and manufacturer data into a single source of truth. Configurable business rules help organisations spot risk, anticipate renewals, forecast spend, and plan technology refreshes. "Our clients are not looking for another asset-management tool," said Kevin Corace, senior vice president, Software and Services Lifecycle, at Presidio. They want a unified view that turns data into action.

PR Newswire
Oct 20th, 2026
Splunk report: 55% of firms can't control AI costs as agents outpace monitoring

Cisco released its Splunk State of Observability 2026 report on October 20, 2026, finding that the rush to deploy AI agents is outpacing the ability to monitor them. The survey covered 2,050 IT operations and engineering professionals across 10 countries. Some 87% say monitoring AI is a priority, yet 56% cannot measure AI workload metrics such as large language model response quality. Also, 55% say they cannot control AI costs, and 60% say unexpected billing spikes strain operations more than high baseline costs. Security collaboration is growing: 81% say monitoring AI has increased cooperation between observability and security teams. Among leading organizations, 91% can accurately attribute AI costs, against 69% of non-leaders.

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.