The application window is expected to close on: 06/30/2026
Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Your ImpactWe are seeking a Principal Product Manager to own the go-to-market strategy for AI-powered use cases across Cisco Networking and to aggregate intelligence across domains into a coherent product narrative that drives customer adoption and competitive differentiation.
This role sits at the intersection of multiple AI product lines and networking platforms. The underlying use cases - troubleshooting, optimization, deployment, remediation - span business units and technologies. Your job is to curate the right use cases, synthesize intelligence from across the portfolio, and take that story to market: to customers, analysts, field sales, and Cisco leadership.
Responsibilities- Own use case strategy: Curate and prioritize the use case portfolio across AI product lines. Decide what ships, what's deferred, and what matters to customers - not just what demos well.
- Aggregate intelligence across domains: Synthesize adoption data, customer feedback, competitive signals, and engineering capabilities into a unified view of where Cisco's AI networking products stand and where they're headed.
- Drive go-to-market: Own the GTM narrative for Cisco Networking's AI capabilities. Coordinate launches, availability programs, and customer enablement with GTM teams. Define positioning and messaging frameworks.
- Shape external narrative: Author the product story for executive leadership, analyst engagements (Gartner, etc.), and customer-facing presentations. Own competitive differentiation and the Cisco Live strategy.
- Define agent taxonomy and messaging: Frame how agentic capabilities are communicated externally - categories, composition, autonomy levels. Keep messaging grounded in what's shipping.
- Bridge networking and central AI: Own the cross-BU relationship with Cisco's Central AI organization. Advocate for networking-specific requirements and ensure domain use cases are represented.
- Drive customer adoption: Engage directly with enterprise customers to validate use cases, define adoption frameworks, and shape the path from early availability to general availability.
- Build coalitions: Align stakeholders across GTM, field sales, analyst relations, CX, and engineering. Ensure the AI story is coherent across every audience.
Technical Depth: A trusted technical, domain, and functional expert who establishes deep trust with engineering at the architectural level. You make product-level technical judgments - what's feasible, what's ready, when to pivot - and help guide others across the organization on technical outcomes.
Communication: You articulate and evangelize the product vision internally and externally. You influence executive and industry stakeholders daily. You craft narratives that unify diverse audiences and move the company in the right direction.
Product Sense: You define new product categories and market opportunities. You set long-term strategic direction and establish organizational product frameworks that uplift the entire team.
Collaboration: You build coalitions across organizations and domains. You mentor product leaders and cross-functional partners. You align and mobilize leadership teams around shared goals.
Bias for Action: You drive bold, company-wide pivots. You execute independently, at scale, with speed. You navigate extreme ambiguity and bring the rest of the organization with you.
Business Acumen: You shape the company's business model and advise executives on high-impact opportunities. You influence investment and resource allocation decisions.
Scope: End-to-end ownership of 4-5 large, high-value product areas, with influence across ThousandEyes and the broader Cisco organization.
Qualifications
Qualifications- 10+ years of product management experience shipping enterprise/SaaS software products, ideally in networking, cloud, or monitoring.
- Strong GTM instincts - you turn technical capabilities into customer-facing stories that sell. Experience with field sales, analyst relations, and marketing.
- Experience with AI/ML technologies - large language models, agentic architectures, multi-agent systems. You know what's real vs. what's hype.
- Ability to synthesize across multiple product lines and domains into a unified narrative and prioritized roadmap.
- Excellent written and verbal communication - you can brief a Gartner analyst, a CIO, and engineering leadership in the same week.
- Experience navigating matrixed organizations and building coalitions across competing priorities.
- Strong ownership. You organize the meetings, write the first draft, and make the call.
- Bachelor's degree in CS, engineering, or equivalent. Advanced degree is a plus.
