Field CTO

The application window is expected to close on: 09/03/2026

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received .

Meet the Team

Field CTOs are force multipliers that employ their industry experience and strategic understanding to drive customer outcomes and Splunk and Cisco growth. The Field CTO role is essential to help customers understand and maximize the full value of current and potential future investments customers make in Splunk and Cisco capabilities.

Field CTOs build and maintain c-level customer relationships across critical accounts in collaboration with senior Splunk sales leadership while influencing strategic pipeline through partners, executive programs, and field initiatives. Additionally, Field CTOs proactively mitigate renewal risk through targeted executive engagement.

Field CTOs operate across three pillars:

• Customer executive engagement: meet with customers, establish relationships, and serve as an executive sponsor for select accounts to provide industry insights and leverage best-practice expertise.

• Industry thought leadership: provide leading expertise to ensure Cisco market credibility while piloting industry change.

• Partner and strategy interlock: leverage industry and customer insights and provide executive leadership to drive Partner, Product, Sales, and Marketing strategy and efforts.

Deep understanding and real-world experience in one or more of key Splunk domains is required:

• Observability

• Security

• AI enablement and or assurance

• Data

Your Impact

• Engage, establish relationships, and influence customer executives

• Support qualified and strategic sales opportunities with account teams and senior sales leadership by collaborating on internal meetings, joining customer calls, and attending customer-facing meetings

• Be an inspiring leader within Splunk and Cisco, in customer meetings, and in public settings by understanding where and how the Splunk and Cisco portfolios' capabilities enable our customers to realize their top opportunities

• Correlate Splunk and Cisco products with customers' requirements, internal teams, and potential process uplifts to accomplish sophisticated use cases and business outcomes

• Adeptly have a conversation with C-Level executives driving understanding of strategic vision with the ability to switch to technical conversations in Splunk and Cisco's domains

• Work closely with Sales, Partners, Strategy, Product Management, and Product Marketing teams to formulate Splunk strategy

• Closely follow industry trends and direction to advise customer priorities

• Serve as an industry leader evangelizing innovative capabilities and provide thought leadership through various formats (e.g. industry conferences, webinars, articles, keynotes, customer advisory board representation, executive education, etc.)

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and MBA or equivalent work experience

• 15 years of experience in a customer-facing role explaining strategic and tactical concepts to customers. This may include internal customers if owning an IT or security function at a large enterprise.

• 10+ years of experience with Splunk solutions or equivalent industry solutions. This may include program sponsorship or senior technology leadership.

• Recent industry experience and deep technical leadership background in either security, observability / IT, data, and or artificial intelligence.

• Understanding of best practices and requirements selling into large customer environments.

• Travel up to 20% (may include global travel)

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous C-level experience is preferred

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.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: The starting salary range posted for this position is $319,100.00 to $427,700.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco's plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco's policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee's birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco's flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco's policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

$319,100.00 - $491,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$311,000.00 - $452,000.00

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco's sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.