Director, Product Management

The application window is expected to close on: 11/29/2026

Meet the Team

At Cisco and Splunk, we are uniting market-leading networking, security, and observability capabilities to deliver unprecedented visibility, resilience, and operational excellence across the entire digital footprint. Within our product organization, the Engineering Excellence and Operations team focuses on establishing best-in-class developer platforms, operational practices, and enterprise-grade observability architectures that power high-velocity software delivery.

In this strategic leadership role as Director of Product Management, you will define the multi-year product strategy and roadmap for Engineering Excellence and Operations. You will lead product definition and execution across critical initiatives, including establishing the Splunk Observability Center of Excellence (CoE), driving regional expansion and compliance roadmaps, and transforming the global Developer Experience (DevX). Partnering closely with engineering, operations, architecture, and executive partners, you will turn strategic priorities into delivered outcomes—making Cisco’s internal adoption of the Splunk Observability Cloud an industry benchmark that directly informs and accelerates customer discussions.

Your Impact

As a builder with a player-coach approach, you and your team will drive strategy and technical execution.

• Define and implement the comprehensive product vision and multi-year roadmap for Engineering Excellence and Operations, aligning product priorities directly with enterprise business and engineering goals.
• Partner with engineering and architecture on clear product definitions, milestone planning, backlog prioritization, and delivery governance, effectively aligning partners and resolving technical tradeoffs.
• Lead the strategic product direction for the Observability CoE, advancing Cisco’s internal deployment and utilization of Splunk Observability Cloud.
• Define high-impact operational use cases, enterprise rollout plans, and scalable operating practices that showcase the power of Splunk Observability to external customers.
• Build and implement product roadmaps that support regional expansion, collaborating across global teams to define localized requirements, architectural dependencies, and delivery sequencing.
• Partner closely with engineering, legal, security, and operations partners to translate complex regional compliance and governance mandates into actionable product requirements and roadmap work.
• Elevate the developer journey by optimizing the platforms, internal tools, and CI/CD workflows that enable distributed engineering teams to build, test, and deploy resilient software efficiently.
• Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing team of Product Managers, setting clear performance bars, fostering career development, and establishing strategic alignment across the portfolio.
• Bridge technical discussions with senior principal engineers/architects and executive business reviews with multi-functional leadership across business units.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field or equivalent practical work experience.
• 12+ years of professional experience in the industry with a proven background in software product management for enterprise B2B SaaS products.
• 3+ years of direct experience leading, managing, or mentoring product managers.
• Experience defining product roadmaps and managing product lifecycles for enterprise software, cloud services, observability platforms, developer platforms (DevX), or similar product areas.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or a Master of Business Administration (MBA) or equivalent work experience.
• Deep domain expertise in enterprise observability, Application Performance Monitoring (APM), log analytics, distributed tracing, metric infrastructure, or cloud-native architectures (Splunk, OpenTelemetry, AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong technical foundation with the proven ability to engage credibly in deep architectural discussions with principal engineers, software architects, and operations leads.
• Demonstrated track record modernizing internal developer platforms, SDLC automation tools, and large-scale engineering operational workflows.
• Proven ability to translate ambiguous operational, technical, and regulatory compliance requirements into crisp, prioritized product roadmaps and delivered business outcomes.
• Demonstrable success translating sophisticated technical concepts into strategic value propositions for business executives and external customer engagements.

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 $233,900.00 to $330,400.00 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:

$233,900.00 - $380,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$220,900.00 - $344,300.00

* 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.