Senior Vice President, Sales Strategy, Commercial Excellence & Transformation

Lumen connects people, data, and applications quickly, securely, and effortlessly. As enterprises accelerate their adoption of AI, cloud, edge, security, and next-generation connectivity solutions, Lumen is evolving its commercial model to help customers operate with greater speed, intelligence, and confidence.

About the role

The Senior Vice President, Sales Strategy, Commercial Excellence & Transformation will own the end-to-end commercial blueprint for Lumen’s go-to-market organization. This leader will shape multi-year commercial strategy, drive execution discipline, modernize sales operations, strengthen customer and partner engagement models, and lead large-scale transformation across a complex enterprise environment. The role is designed for a senior executive who can operate as a COO-like partner to the Chief Revenue Officer, translating enterprise priorities into a clear commercial agenda, scalable operating model, and measurable growth outcomes.

Lumen is at a once-in-a-career inflection point, reinventing itself as the trusted network for AI. This moment offers leaders real ownership, influence, and visible, market-defining impact in shaping how the AI economy works at scale.

Responsibilities

• Define and operationalize Lumen’s multi-year commercial strategy in partnership with the Chief Revenue Officer and executive leadership team.
• Redesign the go-to-market operating model to support recurring revenue, consumption-based selling, platform-oriented growth, and enterprise customer needs.
• Develop a clear commercial playbook integrating strategy, sales motions, segmentation, coverage models, talent, incentives, technology, partners, and execution governance.
• Translate market insights, customer needs, and business priorities into focused growth agendas and scalable commercial capabilities.
• Partner closely with Finance to strengthen revenue planning, forecasting, performance management, and investment prioritization.
• Lead enterprise-wide commercial transformation efforts to modernize Lumen’s sales engine and improve execution discipline.
• Drive Phase 1 of the transformation agenda, including stabilizing execution, modernizing sales platforms, aligning stakeholders, and building the foundation for scalable growth.
• Reevaluate the full sales lifecycle, including presales, sales motions, customer success, partner engagement, and post-sale expansion.
• Establish clear operating rhythms, accountability mechanisms, and performance metrics across the go-to-market organization.
• Ensure transformation initiatives translate into sustained adoption, behavioral change, and measurable business outcomes.
• Partner with Sales Enablement, Talent, Compensation, and business leaders to reshape the salesforce for future-state selling.
• Help define the capabilities, roles, responsibilities, incentives, and enablement model required to support SaaS-oriented and consumption-based commercial motions.
• Improve sales productivity, forecasting accuracy, pipeline quality, customer engagement, and overall go-to-market performance.
• Lead initiatives to strengthen commercial discipline, customer experience, and repeatable execution across sales teams.
• Support the development of a more modern, agile, data-driven, and customer-centric sales organization.
• Drive modernization of sales platforms, tools, data infrastructure, and analytics capabilities, including continued evolution of Salesforce and related commercial systems.
• Ensure commercial technology investments directly support sales effectiveness, leadership visibility, operational discipline, and customer experience.
• Partner with technology and operations teams to improve data quality, workflow design, reporting, and decision-making across the revenue organization.
• Use data and insights to identify performance gaps, prioritize initiatives, and guide executive decision-making.
• Strengthen Lumen’s partner strategy and ecosystem approach as a key lever for future growth.
• Align partner motions, direct sales coverage, and customer engagement models to support enterprise growth priorities.
• Improve the end-to-end customer experience by ensuring strategy, sales execution, service delivery, and customer success are tightly connected.
• Build scalable commercial approaches to serve complex enterprise customers with greater consistency and impact.
• Serve as a trusted advisor and operating partner to the Chief Revenue Officer.
• Lead cross-functional transformation in a matrixed enterprise environment with multiple stakeholder groups and competing priorities.
• Build alignment across senior leaders, reinforce accountability, and help teams move from strategy to execution.
• Communicate with clarity and credibility across executive, board-level, and frontline audiences.
• Create momentum, remove barriers, and embed durable change across the organization.

Requirements

• 10+ years in senior leadership experience in commercial strategy, sales operations, revenue operations, business transformation, go-to-market strategy, or commercial excellence.
• Proven track record designing and executing large-scale transformation across a complex enterprise environment.
• Experience supporting or leading commercial models tied to recurring revenue, consumption-based revenue, SaaS, cloud, platform, or enterprise technology businesses.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with a Chief Revenue Officer or senior executive team to translate strategy into execution.
• Strong understanding of sales lifecycle design, segmentation, coverage models, forecasting, sales enablement, customer success, partner strategy, and performance management.
• Experience modernizing commercial systems, sales tools, data platforms, and operating rhythms.
• Strong financial and analytical orientation, with the ability to connect commercial strategy to revenue performance, investment decisions, and ROI.
• Executive presence and credibility with senior leadership, board-level audiences, customers, and cross-functional partners.
• Experience leading teams and influencing across a matrixed organization without relying solely on direct authority.
• Demonstrated success building scalable operating models, governance mechanisms, and transformation playbooks.

Qualifications

• Background in enterprise technology, cloud, SaaS, AI infrastructure, networking, cybersecurity, telecommunications, or related sectors.
• Experience in organizations undergoing significant business model evolution or commercial transformation.
• Exposure to large global partner ecosystems and indirect/channel growth strategies.
• Experience with Salesforce modernization or broader revenue technology transformation.
• Prior COO, Chief Transformation Officer, Chief Revenue Operations Officer, Sales Strategy, Commercial Excellence, or senior GTM operations leadership experience.
• Experience engaging with Boards, executive committees, and external customers or partners.

Pay

This position offers a base salary range of $279,263 - $372,351, with minimums and maximums varying by location. Individual pay is based on skills, experience, and other relevant factors.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, life, and voluntary lifestyle benefits.
• Additional perks enhancing physical, mental, emotional, and financial wellbeing.
• Bonus structure including short-term incentives, long-term incentives, and/or sales compensation.