Corporate Strategy Manager

Strategy And Planning Manager

This role is hybrid, you must be able to work onsite in San Jose, CA.

The Strategy and Planning team at Cisco operates under the leadership of the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). This team is responsible for guiding Cisco's overall strategic direction, including corporate strategy, development, and incubation efforts. Their focus spans acquisitions, investments, strategic partnerships, and emerging technology incubation to create new markets and drive growth. The team also partners closely with the Executive Leadership Team to accelerate innovation, alignment, and business planning across the company. With a strong emphasis on cross-functional initiatives and operational cadence, the Strategy and Planning team plays a critical role in shaping Cisco's future and ensuring sustained competitive advantage.

Your Impact

As a Strategy and Planning Manager at Cisco, you will lead projects that identify and evaluate new technologies and business models to enhance Cisco's technology leadership and customer relevance. You will:

• Drive decision-making, execution, and investments to turn strategic opportunities into business outcomes.
• Deliver on projects that identify and explore new technologies and business models to extend Cisco's technology leadership and customer relevance, then lead the decision-making, execution and investments to make those opportunities a reality
• Work closely with Cisco business units and cross-functional leadership to formulate long-term strategic priorities and plans related to e.g., organic and inorganic growth strategy, emerging industry trends, competitive dynamics, and internal business performance improvement
• Work cross-functionally across external and internal collaborators, partnering closely with Cisco's product, engineering, finance, sales, marketing and other teams
• Become an expert in Cisco's business and have a deep understanding on the markets we serve and competitors we face

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) with a minimum of 2 years of post MBA work experience.
• Experience working in a top-tier consulting firm, top 5 investment bank or within top venture capital firms.
• Experience with corporate strategy, planning, M&A, investments, etc.
• Proven experience in all facets of strategy development, including project management, business analysis, problem solving, verbal and written communication, consensus building, and people development.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience working with one of the top three consulting firms.
• Specialized knowledge in technology strategy, particularly in Hyperscalers, AI, licensing, and monetization, with a demonstrated ability to quickly learn new areas.
• You have experience supporting projects technologies companies or you have a background in engineering or computer science.
• You have product management experience at a technology firm. You demonstrate the ability to become a future leader and be successful in an unstructured, team environment.
• Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to engage senior executives across multiple geographies.
• You possess strong analytical and financial abilities to work on sophisticated business issues with minimum supervision.

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. Simply put we power the future. 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.