Solutions Engineer - Hypershield - EMEA

As a Solution Engineer, you will play a critical role on a team that operates like a start-up with unique access to Cisco’s resources, industry leadership, and scale. Incubation is a team within the Global Security Sales Organization (GSSO) that is responsible for selling new Cisco Security products to early adopters and helping prepare for broader global distribution of the product.

Cisco Security is consistently launching innovative products in the market. These new products help Cisco's customers adopt a more effective defense against the world's most sophisticated cyber threats.

The first product you will be responsible for in this role is a network security solution for modern applications called Hypershield. This requires a solid understanding of customer value drivers related to network security for modern platform architectures and the related trends and market landscape. You will apply a hunting mentality to generate pipeline and revenue for this new product with a thoughtful go-to-market strategy for new and existing Cisco Security customers across an assigned territory.

Your Impact

You are responsible for collaborating with the BU and GTM teams to ensure market success of Hypershield. This is a highly visible technical (pre-sales) position that supports the Product and Engineering Business Units, Sales and Field Engineering organizations, working directly with each of them, our partners, and prospective customers.

You will conduct technical presentations, set up demonstrations to explain features and benefits to customers. You will form relationships with our customer’s key decision-makers, positioning Cisco solutions aligned precisely to their requirements. As an advisor to the customer, you will craft architectures and configure products to meet their specific needs and be prepared to lead all technical aspects of pre-sales activities through to a successful deployment of our incubated technologies.

You must be highly accomplished in the areas of application security concepts, cloud security concepts, and more specifically the entire Cloud Application Security Development and Deployment lifecycle. You will possess skills across data center networking, firewalls, Application and Network Segmentation strategies (Macro & Micro), Container Security and Orchestration platforms. Additionally, you will need knowledge of and to keep up to date on networking and software enablement, API’s and Network Programmability. You will work with a variety of technologies and will therefore need strong cross-functional collaboration and consultative skills. The capacity to demonstrate technical solutions and capabilities effectively and conduct multi-architectural Proof-of-Value (POV) tests is a must.

• You are a self-starter, will act as an industry domain expert, and strive to help Cisco make customers for life.
• Act as the highest field escalation resource for the SE team and potential prospects for technical product questions, demos, trials / POVs, and pre-sale customer issues during the sales cycle.
• Deliver technical presentations along with sales staff via web conferencing or in-field to prospective C-level audience and technical decision makers.
• Be available as a competitive expert to assist with product positioning and customer opportunity success.
• Provide essential input and responses to assist with major RFIs / RFPs.
• Assist with delivery and GTM of new Hypershield product features as they are introduced.
• Participate in formal Early Adoption and Private Preview programs to thoroughly test new technologies, providing feedback to Product and Engineering teams.
• You will be expected to lead our Private Preview customer and partner engagements, directly responsible for in-field deployment and success of our new product offers.
• Evangelize to and enable the wider Cisco SE and Partner SE teams across the region.
• Work directly with Product Management as a liaison to accounts around technical product requirements and to help provide customer feedback with the goal of enabling continuous improvement of Hypershield.
• Effectively interact with internal engineering teams to scope and provide solutions to complex technical issues for highly visible customer and market opportunities.
• Assist in the development of GTM tools such as Demos, Workshops, Trial and POV best practices by creating content, giving demos and running labs in support of various events (internal, partner, customer).

Minimum Qualifications

· 5+ years of technical experience as a pre-sales engineer, network operations support, or application engineering role.

· 5+ years of enterprise pre-sales experience working directly with network, cloud security and/or micro-segmentation products in a customer-facing role.

· Have a solid mastery of LAN, WAN, Cloud Security (L4-L7, FWaaS, IPS, DNS Security, VPN etc.) technologies.

Preferred Qualifications

· Understanding of competitive products such as Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet, VMware, Illumio, Guardicore (Akami) Networks; ability to articulate Cisco differentiators.

· Strong knowledge of cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and container technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker).

· Deep understanding and familiarity with competing market-leading micro-segmentation products.

· Strong understanding of networking protocols and technologies, including switching, routing, and security.

· Familiarity with security principles related to microservices architecture and serverless computing.

· Passion for customer satisfaction and delivering results, even when faced with nuanced and difficult situations.

· A self-starter with a positive attitude and friendly outgoing personality.

· Strong written and email etiquette skill.

· Strong oral interpersonal skills, including the ability to present technical information in user-friendly language.

· Ability to prioritize and work responsibly with or without direct supervision.