This role leads and manages the full lifecycle of customer-facing projects and programs across Cisco technologies, from initiation through planning, execution, and closure, ensuring alignment with customer business goals and Cisco's strategic objectives. The position is accountable for the successful execution of projects and programs, including scope, schedule, budget, quality, and customer satisfaction, and provides regular updates to Service Delivery Managers (SDMs) and Customer Experience Managers (CXMs) to ensure transparency and alignment across delivery and customer adoption goals.
Responsibilities include managing project-level budget execution, ensuring operational excellence through accurate project reflection in Cisco's systems and tools, overseeing financial forecasting and reporting, and maintaining compliance with delivery governance standards. The role also coordinates with Cisco's vendor management teams to source bids, recommend partner selections, and create statements of work (SOW) and terms and conditions (T&Cs), while collaborating with SDMs, who have final accountability for partner selection, SOW approval, and performance.
The position operates within industry methodologies such as PMI and Agile, and Cisco's operational processes, ensuring compliance, financial responsibility, and rigorous governance through structured communications, risk and issue management, and stakeholder alignment. Additional duties include maintaining project governance by managing invoicing, payment tracking, and forecasting processes, executing change management strategies to ensure operational discipline and adherence to Cisco's business standards, applying AI and automation tools to streamline planning, reporting, risk detection, and closeout activities, and championing continuous improvement through lessons learned, retrospectives, and knowledge sharing across teams and engagements.
What You’ll Do: •Typically responsible for end-to-end delivery of medium to large projects or components of programs •Manages multiple workstreams and ensures alignment with Cisco’s operational processes and reporting standards •Maintains strong customer relationships and ensures technical and operational alignment across delivery •Owns project representation in Cisco’s business systems (e.g., financial forecast, partner engagement status) •Aligns customer requirements to scope and delivery plans, ensuring the right resources are engaged to meet business needs •Leads solution discussions with customers, connecting business priorities to delivery outcomes •Tracks customer satisfaction metrics and feedback, supports contract change coordination with SDMs and sales, and helps address escalations and drive adoption •Integrates multiple dynamic inputs (e.g., customer feedback, project/program metrics) to drive innovation and maximize customer outcomes •Nurtures ongoing relationships with customers and a range of delivery partners •Oversees execution of project plans and contract change processes; ensures cross-functional coordination and adherence to operational standards •Anticipates and mitigates conflicts across workstreams through scenario planning and stakeholder alignment •Allocates and evaluates resource needs (e.g., training, tools, funding), creates contingency plans (backup allocations and schedule buffers), and proactively manages scope creep •Provides revenue and cost forecasts using Cisco's financial systems; monitors project-level financials to support delivery margin and forecast accuracy •Manages partner engagement and governance, including sourcing SOWs, invoice tracking and contract compliance •Demonstrates working knowledge of multiple engineering/technical domains and provides domain knowledge transfer to junior team members •Contributes to PM community in a variety of ways, which may include developing scalable project management tools and practices and applying AI technologies (e.g., AI-powered project