Solutions Engineer - Service Provider
Cisco
Meet the Team
Join the Cisco South Africa team, where we collaborate to provide the best solutions for our clients. Our team supports and empowers you to grow alongside our customers, fostering an environment where we care about our clients, enjoy having fun, and actively participate in local community initiatives.
We are seeking an experienced Solutions Engineer to help drive sales opportunity at a major multinational customer to help it transform its network architectures, by applying Cisco's world-class products, technologies and solutions.
At Cisco, we seek to enable our customers to drive profitable business outcomes, crafting many growth opportunities through innovation. We have enabled them to transform the experience and evolve their business and architectures with open and flexible solutions. We use our assets to address their critical challenges. Do you want to help with this change? In this role you have the chance to lead market transitions!
Why You Will Love Cisco
Is technology your passion? Come work for a company where you can see your ideas come to life. Where people consistently work with industry leaders and knowledgeable specialists that will help craft your future and career.
We celebrate our employees’ diverse set of backgrounds and focus on unlocking potential. Cisconians often experience one company, many careers where learning and development are encouraged and supported at every stage. Our technology, tools, and culture pioneered hybrid work trends, allowing all to not only give their best, but be their best.
We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference.
What you will do
You will conduct technical presentations, demonstrate Cisco products and solutions, set up demonstrations and explain features and benefits to customers. As an advisor to the customer, you will design and configure products to meet specific customer needs. You will gain access to and work with a wide palette of the Cisco solutions, including Networking, Data Center, Security, Workplace Solutions & Automation. You will have to master the relationship of Cisco solutions to programmability, cloud native systems, public and private Cloud deployments and Artificial Intelligence.
Besides having a strong technical background you will need to have the ability to learn and keep up to date on a continuous basis.
Working with a broad range of technologies will need strong team working and consultative skills and capacities to effectively showcase Cisco solutions, demonstrate technical solutions and capabilities, conduct Proof-of-Concept (PoC) tests.
If you are interested in this pre-sales Solutions Engineering role you should come with a passion, energy, and tenacity to work across all Cisco Products, you should possess and/or cultivate strong Business Unit relationships and be able to navigate through Cisco's cross functional areas (Services, Marketing, Architecture and Development Teams) effectively. In addition to technical capabilities and the ability to learn quickly as well as knowledge of current technology trends, your social, presentation and troubleshooting skills come as very important for this role! You should be familiar with how to successfully navigate a complex account and customer base. In this position you will work and develop a marquee account and will have a direct impact on a Cisco’s business strategy.
Who you’ll work with
In this dynamic, customer focused role, you will partner directly with Solutions Account Managers and an extended team to position complex software and hardware solutions, passionate about solving the business and technical problems of our customer. In that capacity you will be part of a multinational account team serving the customer and you will rely on an extended network of Cisco services professionals and Technical teams, with close support of your sales leadership/executives.
Who You Are
You should excel in presenting technical architectures, solutions and products to key decision-makers from Managers to Directors and above. You should be comfortable presenting to both small and large audiences.
Our minimum requirements for this role are:
- 5+ years-related experience.
- Understand customer business drivers and how to map these to a customer network platform - Technical Acumen
- Understand networking industry, including keeping updated on products and solutions
- Technical consulting skills, including ability to define trade-offs, ask probing questions, and incorporate Cisco solutions into a broader technology environment
Our preferred requirements for this role are:
- Pre-Sales experience recommended.
- Cisco product experience or meaningful experience in key competitor offerings in technology area of emphasis.
- CCIE preferred or equivalent
- Typically requires BS/BA (EE/CS) or equivalent.
#WeAreCisco
#WeAreCisco where every individual brings their unique skills and perspectives together to pursue our purpose of powering an inclusive future for all.
Our passion is connection—we celebrate our employees’ diverse set of backgrounds and focus on unlocking potential. Cisconians often experience one company, many careers where learning and development are encouraged and supported at every stage. Our technology, tools, and culture pioneered hybrid work trends, allowing all to not only give their best, but be their best.
We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference. Dedicated paid time off to volunteer—80 hours each year—allows us to give back to causes we are passionate about, and nearly 86% do!
Our purpose, driven by our people, is what makes us the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Helping our customers reimagine their applications, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals is what we do best. We ensure that every step we take is a step towards a more inclusive future for all. Take your next step and be you, with us!
When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.
U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings.
Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter. Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community.
Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. 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 up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.