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,