Pursuit Lead/Pod Leader - Strategic Engagement Team in London

Meet the Team

The EMEA SET team is the engine room for Cisco's largest, most strategic deals in EMEA. We bring a diverse blend of cross-domain architecture, commercial expertise, and structured governance to every pursuit. Joining us means being at the forefront of Cisco's most strategic opportunities, directly shaping the future of our customer's digital transformation and contributing to our global success.

Your Impact

As a SET Pod Leader, you're a dual leader who combines high-stakes deal execution with the mentorship and management of a high-performing team of Pursuit Leads. You will serve as a "player-coach"; responsible for the professional development of your team, the alignment of their pursuits with Cisco's strategic objectives, and successfully winning your own large scale, strategic sales engagements with our largest customers. You are the "single point of truth" for deal quality and successful execution within your pod, ensuring that we bring the full weight of Cisco's innovation to our largest EMEA customers!

The two pillars of the role include:

• Leadership & Management (The "Coach" Pillar)

• Team Development: Lead, mentor, and coach a group of experienced Pursuit Leads, encouraging a culture of excellence, collaboration, continuous learning, and career growth.
• Strategic Alignment: Act as the primary liaison between SET and Theatre Sales leadership. Ensure your team's efforts are synchronised with regional sales priorities and the broader Strategic Sales strategy.
• Resource Orchestration: Lead prioritisation across your pod, working with SET Leadership to ensure that the right expertise is deployed to the right pursuits at the right time improving chance of success.
• Deal Coaching: Provide high-level guidance on complex deal structures, commercial strategy, and executive-level negotiations. Act as a sounding board for your team during critical "Executive Checkpoints" and Gate reviews.
• Performance Management: Drive accountability for pipeline quality, deal velocity, and the consistent application of the SET 7-stage methodology ensuring successful execution of the deals in your team.

• Lead High-Impact Pursuits: Personally lead a portfolio of your own active, large-scale transformational engagements (e.g., WPAs, SRAs, and XaaS models).
• Orchestrate Cross-Functional Excellence: Lead without authority, bringing together CxO Advisers, Enterprise Strategists, and Commercial Finance to build winning pursuit plans.
• Commercial & Financial Leadership: Oversee the development of sophisticated commercial models, pricing strategies, and 5-year P&L summaries for your own pursuits, collaborating with Account Teams and Commercial Finance while maintaining accountability for deal profitability and viability.
• Executive Presence: Serve as the lead interface for customer and internal executive stakeholders, ensuring the pursuit ambitions are aligned with the customer's long-term business objectives.

This role is critical to Cisco's ability to win strategic deals in EMEA. By stepping into this leadership position, you will:

• Build the Future: We influence the strategic direction of our largest deals and cultivating the next generation of sales leaders.
• Drive Impact: See the direct results of your coaching and strategy in the form of successful, value led customer outcomes.
• Collaborate at the Top: We work alongside global leadership, industry specialists, and CxO advisory to solve the most business critical challenges facing our customers today.

Minimum Qualifications

• A Proven Leader: 7+ years of experience in large deal execution, with a demonstrated history of leading teams in a matrixed, fast-paced environment.
• A Strategic Coach: You have a talent for identifying the strengths of your team members and elevating their performance. You are skilled at providing motivation through challenging dynamics, providing constructive feedback and navigating complex organisational dynamics.
• Expert in Deal Methodology: You are the authority on the end-to-end deal lifecycle and possess the ability to teach others how to navigate complex contractual structures. You know what it takes to win!

Preferred Qualifications

• Collaborative Influencer: You have high emotional intelligence and the interpersonal skills to engage with Account Teams, Theatre Sales leadership and internal business units, ensuring that SET is viewed as a strategic partner driving growth and franchise expansion in their most important accounts.
• Resilient & Adaptable: You thrive in a hybrid role, balancing the immediate demands of active deal closure with the long-term requirements of team management and pursuit planning.

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.