Senior Director - Product Management (AI)

About the role

The AI Software & Platform Group builds Cisco's enterprise AI platforms and developer tooling, integrating our networking, security, and observability portfolio with modern AI to power autonomous systems. You will own the end-to-end product strategy, technical direction, and commercial outcomes for our AI platform initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Drive the product strategy for AgenticOps, defining how Cisco’s AI agents correlate signals, investigate root causes, and automate high-impact decisions across IT environments.
• Lead the multi-year vision for learning-based models, ensuring rigorous standards for training, evaluation, validation, and safety before deployment.
• Set the roadmap for simulation and digital twin integrations, enabling customers to validate agent behavior and policies within virtual environments before live production rollout.
• Own the platform’s safety, governance, and compliance framework, establishing common patterns for traceability and approval that reduce operational overhead.
• Direct the development of shared foundations, including context orchestration, Model Context Protocol (MCP), APIs, and SDKs, to accelerate the delivery of agentic capabilities across Cisco product teams.
• Advise executive leadership, represent Cisco’s AI strategy in external forums, and mentor senior product and engineering talent to foster a high-performance culture.
• Drive the commercial go-to-market strategy, partnering with sales and marketing to translate technical AI breakthroughs into compelling enterprise value propositions and measurable revenue growth.
• Cultivate a high-impact product organization by encouraging a culture of rigorous data-driven decision-making, operational excellence, and continuous innovation.
• Champion the "AI-first" transformation across Cisco’s broader product portfolio, acting as the primary bridge between cutting-edge research and product-led growth.
• Establish and nurture strategic partnerships with industry leaders, open-source communities, and key customers to shape the global standard for autonomous IT operations.

Requirements

• Bachelor's + 15 years of related experience, or Master's + 12 years, or PhD + 8 years, in product management or a related technical field.
• Consistent record of taking AI/ML capabilities from research concepts to successful, customer-facing products at scale.
• Extensive experience in product strategy for reinforcement learning, simulation-based training, or autonomous systems, including managing the technical complexities of sim-to-real validation.
• Demonstrated ability to own the P&L and commercial strategy for major product lines, with a history of influencing cross-functional engineering, research, and executive teams.
• Deep expertise in building and scaling AI platforms, including the definition of public APIs, SDKs, and developer workflows that drive enterprise adoption, domain depth in networking, security, or observability at enterprise scale.

Qualifications

• Experience establishing and leading AI deployment safety boards or governance frameworks to operationalize fitness-for-purpose evaluations.
• Shown success in 0-to-1 category creation and scaling emerging product lines to significant annual recurring revenue (ARR).
• Experience managing global product organizations and implementing standardized product processes that improve execution velocity and feature satisfaction.
• Familiarity with current research in world models, spatial intelligence, and multi-agent orchestration workflows.

Skills

• Strategic vision and leadership skills.
• Strong technical background in AI, machine learning, and related fields.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to manage complex projects and teams.
• Experience with product management methodologies and tools.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution.
• Paid parental leave.
• Short and long-term disability coverage.
• Basic life insurance.
• Flexible vacation time off program.
• Volunteer time off.
• Annual bonuses for quota-based sales roles.

Pay

The starting salary range posted for this position is $280,100.00 to $384,800.00 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.

Schedule

Full-time position.