Strategic Deals Specialist, Global Security Sales Organization

Strategic Deals Acceleration Desk Specialist

Cisco Security empowers customers to protect their most critical assets across users, applications, networks, data, and AI-driven environments. As a Strategic Deals Acceleration Desk Specialist, you will collaborate with account executives, specialist sellers, solution engineers, and regional sales leaders. You will also partner closely with Sales & Commerce, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Pricing, Product Management, Customer Experience, Partner teams, and Competitive Intelligence. You will be engaged in opportunities that are strategic, highly complex, competitively intense, or forecast-critical, as well as those hindered by legal or commercial blockers, new product constructs, non-standard terms, Leave of Absence (LOA) coverage, or the need for creative financial modeling.

In this role, you will serve as a "deal quarterback," positioning yourself at the center of our most significant security opportunities to help field teams remove friction, establish viable commercial paths, and close complex deals with confidence. Your primary responsibilities include:

• Support complex deals: Orchestrate resources across sales, legal, finance, pricing, operations, product, and partner teams to operationalize and finalize deals.
• Pipeline validation and risk analysis: Collaborate with field leaders to inspect assigned pipelines, validate deal health, test close plans, identify slippage risks, document blockers, and recommend actions to ensure forecast accuracy.
• Close big deals: Manage deal rooms, coordinate cross-functional follow-through, and develop escalation packages to drive forecast-critical opportunities to completion.
• Deal financial modeling: Structure pricing, terms, ramp models, enterprise agreement options, consumption constructs, and financing scenarios to ensure deals are competitive, compliant, and commercially viable.
• Win/loss analysis: Analyze closed deals to identify trends in wins and losses, capture competitive signals, pricing themes, and process blockers, and relay these insights to Competitive Intelligence, Product, Pricing, and Enablement teams.
• Commercial execution: Develop Letters of Intent, Statements of Work (SOWs), and approval packages while reducing ambiguity in non-standard requests to improve turnaround times.
• Field partnership: Co-own late-stage strategic opportunities with account teams while maintaining clear accountability for seller ownership, customer engagement, and internal approvals.
• Product feedback loop: Document recurring blockers related to emerging or immature offers and provide prioritized feedback to product, pricing, support, and enablement teams.
• Operating discipline: Track desk engagement metrics, including cycle-time impact, exception cycles, bookings influenced, win-rate lift, forecast movement, and field satisfaction.

Minimum qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in enterprise sales, specialist sales, deal desk, commercial finance, pricing, revenue operations, sales operations, legal operations, contracting, or a related B2B technology function.
• Proven experience supporting complex enterprise technology deals involving pricing, discounting, legal review, non-standard terms, finance approvals, or executive escalation.
• Strong financial modeling, analytical, and business case development skills.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively across sales, finance, legal, product, operations, and executive stakeholders in a matrixed environment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce executive-ready escalation summaries and deal narratives.
• BA/BS degree or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience in Cybersecurity, SaaS, software subscriptions, or the Cisco Security portfolio.
• Proficiency with Salesforce, Clari, Gong, quote-to-cash tools, pricing workflows, pipeline dashboards, or deal approval processes.
• Experience structuring enterprise agreements, consumption-based offers, ramp deals, financing options, or multi-year commercial constructs.
• Familiarity with competitive deal strategy, win/loss analysis, objection handling, and field enablement.
• Comfortable managing quarter-end escalations, forecast-critical opportunities, and time-sensitive executive requests.
• MBA or professional experience in finance, legal, pricing, or strategy consulting.
• Ability to travel as needed (estimated up to 20%).
• Flexibility to work varied hours to support global geographic locations (AMERICAS, EMEA, and APJC).

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 $181,500.00 to $235,100.00 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 of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to 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.

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

New York City Metro Area:

$215,400.00 - $320,300.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$195,200.00 - $297,100.00

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco's