Leader, Solutions Engineer-US Commercial, Los Angeles

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 09/03/2026 Candidate must reside or be willing to relocate to the Los Angeles, CA area. Meet the Team As we continue to uphold our standard of excellence in Commercial Sales, we are embracing unprecedented innovation as a tremendous opportunity for growth. We succeed because we listen to our customers, anticipate their needs, and adapt as market shifts accelerate. Our culture is built on empowerment, trust, and radical collaboration. We are looking for an exceptional, proactive leader to define the identity, culture, and technical strategy for our Los Angeles engineering team. Your Impact As an Engineering Leader, you will serve as the strategic technical partner to the Regional Sales Leader, business units, architecture leaders, and local peers. You will not only manage a team—you will inspire, elevate, and build a distinctive culture of technical excellence across the region. You will actively acquire top-tier talent, forge deep local community connections, and drive regional technical strategy across significant events and demand generation initiatives. You lead by example, aiming to empower everyone around you through generous collaboration, constructive challenge, and continuous growth. Key Responsibilities Include: • Build Team Culture & Identity Recruit, acquire, and cultivate a world-class team of Solutions Engineers. Foster a culture centered on trust, high performance, generosity, and continuous growth. • Strategic Business Partnership Co-own regional strategy alongside your Regional Sales Manager. Drive revenue through territory resource planning, account prioritization, and quantitative trend analysis. • Lead Regional Technical Strategy Own and execute high-visibility technical engagements, regional events and local demand-generation initiatives. • Champion AI Innovation Act as the regional benchmark for AI adoption. Model the daily use of AI tools, build agentic workflows, vibe code solutions to modern problems, and mentor the team on integrating next-gen tools into their workflows. • Cross-Functional Influence Serve as the advocate for local market needs by forging direct relationships with Business Units, Product Management, and Architecture Leaders to influence the business direction and embody the USC mantra of “First and Most”. • Customer & Partner Advocacy Facilitate deep alignment between customer requirements, corporate strategy, and field execution. Identify qualified partner opportunities and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Minimum Qualifications • Current residence in or willingness to relocate to the Los Angeles area. • 7+ years of relevant experience in pre-sales solutions engineering, technical sales, or technical consulting roles, with demonstrated history in driving business outcomes alongside sales counterparts. • Bachelor’s degree in a technical field (Computer Science, Engineering, IT) or equivalent practical experience. Preferred Qualifications • Hands-on AI Mastery Daily user of modern AI platforms with practical experience vibe coding, building custom AI agents, and designing agentic workflows. Proven track record of teaching and elevating others on emerging AI technologies. • Leadership Experience Formal leadership or team-lead experience with a focus on acquiring, mentoring, and retaining high-performing technical talent. • Strategic Business Acumen Experience building territory plans, tracking regional metrics, managing resource capacity, and aligning technical account strategies to customer business outcomes. • Executive Presence Strong communication, presentation, and storytelling skills with the ability to influence cross-functional peers, executive leadership, and customer decision-makers. • Local Market Expertise Familiarity with the industry landscape, economics, and vertical market trends specific to the Southern California/Los Angeles region. 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. Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: The starting salary range posted for this position is $218,600.00 to $286,100.00 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. 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. 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, and 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 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 Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members 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 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 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid. The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below: New York City Metro Area: $229,000.00 - $344,700.00 Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $218,600.00 - $329,000.00 * 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.