Strategy & Planning Manager

Job Title

Position Summary: We are seeking a highly proactive and strategic problem solver to join the Americas Partner Organization (APO) Headquarters team. As a critical architect of our operational infrastructure, you will serve as a primary partner to sales leadership, ensuring the organization is effectively structured, funded, and motivated to achieve its objectives. You will lead the end-to-end New Year Readiness (NYR) lifecycle and maintain comprehensive oversight of the APO OPEX budget. As a subject matter expert, you will operate behind the scenes to drive business velocity, ensuring our sales teams are accurately goaled, compensated, and fully equipped to complete high-stakes priorities.

Key Responsibilities

• NYR Ownership: Direct the end-to-end New Year and Multi-Year Readiness cycles for the APO, including sophisticated territory coverage modeling, partner hierarchy architecture, and the administration of OTM crediting rules.
• Goaling & Compensation: Partner with Finance to build and implement robust goaling frameworks. Serve as the definitive SME for compensation inquiries, ensuring absolute accuracy and rapid resolution to maintain sales force alignment.
• OPEX Management: Exercise full oversight of the APO OPEX budget. Lead weekly forecast and headcount reviews, conduct rigorous financial modeling, and collaborate with Finance to establish and monitor annual fiscal targets.
• Strategic Execution: Handle strategic budget allocation across teams, delivering actionable, data-driven insights to the Leadership Team regarding budget utilization and headcount optimization.
• Process Leadership: Define the operational cadence, initiatives, and workflows that accelerate business velocity. Provide informal leadership and mentorship to project managers and administrative staff to ensure high-performance execution.

Who You Are

Minimum Requirements

• Professional Tenure: 6+ years of progressive experience in Sales Operations, Business Strategy, Finance, or a related analytical function within a large-scale technology or channel-driven organization.
• Technical & Analytical Proficiency: Expert-level proficiency in financial modeling, Excel, and data visualization tools
• Critical Communication: Shown ability to synthesize complex data into executive-level narratives that influence senior leadership decisions.

Preferred Requirements

• Operational Excellence: Extensive experience within a complex sales organization, with a consistent track record in NYR planning and OPEX management.
• Domain Expertise: Deep knowledge of compensation architecture, goaling, territory planning, and financial operations.
• Change Leadership: Demonstrated success in handling cross-functional processes and leading change initiatives within aggressive, high-stakes timelines.

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.

Message to Applicants Applying to Work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range posted for this position is $114,900.00 to $172,400.00 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.

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:

$149,300.00 - $239,400.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$143,400.00 - $212,200.00

* 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.