Leader, Strategic Deals Acceleration, Global Security Sales Organization

The application window is expected to close on: 07/10/2026Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Preferred location is RTP, North Carolina

Meet the Team

Cisco Security is at the center of how our customers protect their users, data, applications, and critical infrastructure. As part of the Global Security Sales Organization (GSSO), you will partner closely with regional sales leaders, account executives, specialist sellers, solution engineering, Sales & Commerce, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Pricing, Product Management, Customer Experience, Partner teams, and Competitive Intelligence.

The Strategic Deals Acceleration team serves as a trusted extension of the field. We are pulled into engagements when they are strategic, greater than standard complexity, forecast-critical, competitively intense, commercially non-standard, or blocked by legal, pricing, policy, or product maturity issues.

Your Impact

You will build and lead the Strategic Deals Acceleration team, a specialized group focused on helping the field close complex, strategic, and time-sensitive opportunities with speed, discipline, and commercial creativity. You will act as a hands-on operating leader with the executive presence to influence senior stakeholders and the practical discipline to build repeatable systems. You will stay close to the details of strategic deals to shape commercial strategy while developing the people, processes, and governance that allow the team to scale beyond one-off escalations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the Strategic Deals Acceleration Desk: Define the team charter, engagement model, intake process, SLAs, decision rights, RACI, KPIs, and operating cadence for a global deal-acceleration motion.

• Support Complex Deals: Orchestrate sales, specialist, legal, finance, pricing, operations, product, partner, and executive resources to operationalize complex or blocked deals through close.

• Pipeline Validation & Risk Analysis: Inspect pipeline health with regional leaders, test deal quality, identify slippage risk, surface customer or commercial blockers, and protect forecast predictability.

• Close Big Deals: Provide executive-level escalation for strategic opportunities, run deal rooms, align closure plans, and drive accountability across every function required to secure the opportunity.

• Deal Financial Modeling: Guide pricing, discount rationale, terms, ramp structures, enterprise agreements, consumption constructs, financing options, margin tradeoffs, and renewal stability to ensure deals are commercially viable and governable.

• Win/Loss Analysis: Create a closed-deal review motion that captures insights, converts patterns into field coaching and playbooks, and feeds actionable signals to Competitive Intelligence, Product, Pricing, and Enablement teams.

• Governance and Guardrails: Standardize approval paths, exception packages, LOA templates, risk controls, and non-standard term documentation to reduce quarter-end ambiguity and protect revenue quality.

• Scale Emerging Security Offers: Partner with product teams to define early-adopter commercial models, supportability boundaries, LOI templates, conversion paths, and customer feedback loops for fast-evolving products.

• Team Leadership: Hire, coach, and develop high-performing deal acceleration specialists and commercial deal architects; foster a culture of urgency, sound judgment, accountability, and field trust.

Leadership Traits:

• Commercially Decisive: You understand enterprise buying behavior, margin implications, financing levers, and policy tradeoffs, ensuring deals are structured for mutual success.

• Data-Driven: You utilize pipeline data, deal signals, forecast movement, and win/loss patterns to identify risk early and drive decisive action.

• Matrix Leader: You influence through clarity, trust, and crisp operating mechanisms across functions that do not directly report to you.

• Coach: You set a high bar, build confidence under pressure, and create an environment where urgency and governance reinforce each other.

• Field-Obsessed: You understand the desk exists to help sellers close faster and with greater confidence while improving overall deal quality for Cisco.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in enterprise sales, sales leadership, deal strategy, sales operations, commercial finance, pricing, revenue operations, or a related B2B technology function.

• 5+ years of people leadership or demonstrated experience leading senior cross-functional teams in a complex matrix environment.

• Proven record accelerating or closing large, complex enterprise technology deals involving pricing, legal, finance, policy, or executive escalation.

• Experience building operating cadences, pipeline inspection routines, executive reporting, and KPI frameworks tied to bookings, win rate, cycle time, forecast quality, and deal quality.

• Strong commercial and financial acumen across software, security, subscription, multi-year, enterprise agreement, discounting, margin, renewal, and non-standard contract considerations.

• BA/BS degree or equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with the Cybersecurity, SaaS, software subscription, or Cisco Security portfolio.

• Experience with deal desk, pricing approval, quote-to-cash, enterprise agreement, financing, or commercial architecture motions.

• Working knowledge of Salesforce, Clari, sales forecasting, pipeline analytics, and executive deal review processes.

• Ability to communicate complex commercial issues clearly to executives, field leaders, product teams, finance, legal, and customers.

• MBA, or a background in finance, legal, pricing, or strategy consulting.

• Ability to travel as needed, estimated up to 20%.

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 $236,100.00 to $298,000.00 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:

$274,000.00 - $397,700.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$249,100.00 - $367,700.00

* 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.