Customer Project Specialist - Japan CX

Job description

Please note this posting is to advertise potential job opportunities. This exact role may not be open today but could open in the near future. When you apply, a Cisco representative may contact you directly if a relevant position opens. This role leads and manages the full lifecycle of customer-facing projects and programs across Cisco technologies, from initiation through planning, execution, and closure, ensuring alignment with customer business goals and Cisco's strategic objectives. The position is accountable for the successful execution of projects and programs, including scope, schedule, budget, quality, and customer satisfaction, and provides regular updates to Service Delivery Managers (SDMs) and Customer Experience Managers (CXMs) to ensure transparency and alignment across delivery and customer adoption goals. Responsibilities include managing project-level budget execution, ensuring operational excellence through accurate project reflection in Cisco's systems and tools, overseeing financial forecasting and reporting, and maintaining compliance with delivery governance standards. The role also coordinates with Cisco's vendor management teams to source bids, recommend partner selections, and create statements of work (SOW) and terms and conditions (T&Cs), while collaborating with SDMs, who have final accountability for partner selection, SOW approval, and performance. The position operates within industry methodologies such as PMI and Agile, and Cisco's operational processes, ensuring compliance, financial responsibility, and rigorous governance through structured communications, risk and issue management, and stakeholder alignment. Additional duties include maintaining project governance by managing invoicing, payment tracking, and forecasting processes, executing change management strategies to ensure operational discipline and adherence to Cisco's business standards, applying AI and automation tools to streamline planning, reporting, risk detection, and closeout activities, and championing continuous improvement through lessons learned, retrospectives, and knowledge sharing across teams and engagements. What You’ll Do: • Supports discrete tasks or components of a project under close supervision • Gains exposure to project delivery processes and begins developing familiarity with a single technology or solution area • Primarily supports senior team members and observes customer interactions • Captures and routes customer questions or concerns to senior team members • Learns to recognize customer priorities by reviewing project documentation and listening during customer calls • Begins to understand how customer needs relate to project scope • Assists in gathering delivery inputs (e.g., resource needs, timelines, budget estimates) from stakeholders • Drafts and updates basic project plans and timelines with task assignments and dependencies • Conducts standard risk analysis and reports project specific risks to appropriate stakeholders • Learns Cisco delivery tools for note-taking and task tracking; distributes action items to team members as relevant • Observes how financial data (e.g., budget estimates, resource costs) are gathered and begins learning Cisco’s delivery and reporting tools, including partner engagement processes • Demonstrates basic project management knowledge and develops basic understanding of a(n) engineering/technical domain for purposes of program management • Learns foundational product and service terminology through onboarding and guided documentation review; begins building AI fluency • Observes technical discussions and captures key terms or questions for follow-up • Uses internal tools to log and track technical feedback or defects • Participates in team discussions and collaborates with peers to complete assigned tasks • Communicates task status clearly and seeks guidance from senior team members • Begins to understand cross-functional roles and how they contribute to delivery • Supports issue resolution and knowledge sharing by interfacing with other Project/Program Managers and occasionally with customers • Builds awareness of what a unified engagement experience looks like across teams Minimum Qualifications: Bachelors + 0 years of previous experience, or 4 years of related experience Preferred Qualifications: PM CAPM preferred Technical certification preferred (e.g., CCST Networking, CCST Security, CCNA) THIS JOB DESCRIPTION DOES NOT APPLY FOR EMPLOYEES IN GERMANY. 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.