Team Lead, Sales GTM - AI Operations

About the role

The AI Center of Excellence for Sales is Cisco's engine for putting AI in the hands of every seller. Our mission is direct and ambitious: give sellers more time with customers by taking the non-selling work off their plate and make that time infinitely more productive. We turn Cisco's best go-to-market plays into seller-facing AI agents that tell a seller — in the flow of the deal — exactly what to do next to win. We do it in close partnership with two teams: the Global Specialist Organization, who owns go-to-market, and the GTM IT engineering team, who we design and build alongside and who runs our AI in production at scale.

Responsibilities

• Co-Own the campaign/play evaluation layer.
• Build and maintain the golden-case evaluation sets that define what good next-best-action advice looks like in partnership with GTM-IT, conditioned by segment and geography.
• Translate the go-to-market partner's definitions of which plays we run and what winning means into concrete, testable evaluation cases.
• Run the learning loop. Curation of real outcomes — did the seller act, did it work — back into the evaluation sets, so each version of an agent is measurably better than the last.
• Set and hold the bar. Define what “good enough to ship” means, and agree on that bar with GTM IT engineering so one standard governs what ships, not two.
• Guard the seam. Be the pod's closest link to the GTM Organization, the GTM Campaign Strategy & Outcomes owner, and GTM IT engineering — ensuring go-to-market intent survives the move into production intact.

Requirements

• 12+ years of software or ML engineering experience, including senior or lead responsibility for quality, evaluation, or ML systems.
• Previous experience designing evaluation for AI/ML or LLM systems — golden sets, offline and online evaluation, and regression testing of model behavior.
• Previous experience translating domain judgment into concrete, testable specifications.
• Experience sitting between non-technical go-to-market stakeholders and engineers.
• Experience in the sales domain — a former seller, or someone who can verifiably demonstrate working side by side with sellers.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field.

Qualifications

• Preferred Qualifications:
  • Experience owning evaluation or quality for a production LLM product.
  • Previous sales or go-to-market domain knowledge.
  • Familiarity with LangGraph and Python.
  • Experience mentoring engineers and setting technical standards.
  • Experience shipping jointly with a partner engineering organization — shared standards, co-owned code, no over-the-wall handoffs.

Skills

• Strong understanding of machine learning and AI principles.
• Experience with evaluation and quality assurance methodologies.
• Ability to translate complex business requirements into technical specifications.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Knowledge of sales processes and strategies.

Benefits

At Cisco, we offer competitive compensation packages, including a starting salary range of $256,900.00 to $333,400.00 for this position in U.S. and Canadian 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.

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.
• 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 a 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.
• 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 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.

Note: 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.

• New York City Metro Area: $256,900.00 - $383,500.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $234,400.00 - $341,100.00