The Customer Delivery Architect has a deep and broad architectural expertise across technology architectures and is a recognized technical authority for defining and leading architecture strategy for Cisco's largest and most sophisticated customers. The role combines expertise across an enterprise technology domains with an expansive understanding of enterprise architecture, business priorities, and technology operations to guide technology decisions and deliver solutions at scale. The Architect works directly with customer technology leaders, engineers, Cisco teams, and partners to define architectures and technology roadmaps that address requirements while preparing for future business and technology needs. This includes evaluating architectural options and tradeoffs; defining target-state architectures; guiding design, integration, migration, and implementation; and identifying technical, operational, and business risks. The role provides leadership across highly integrated customer environments that may span cross-architecture environments, observability, automation, AI, data platforms, and technologies. The Architect establishes architectural direction across these domains and ensures that individual technology decisions work together as a coherent enterprise architecture. As an architectural authority and leader, the CDA leads multidisciplinary and cross-vendor teams through complex programs and critical technical decisions. The role works across Cisco's technical, business, and services organizations, Customer Success, partners, and customer organizations to resolve architectural issues, remove technical barriers, and maintain alignment from strategy through implementation and adoption. The Architect also helps customers evaluate and integrate new technologies, including AI and intelligent automation, where they provide clear technical or business value. This requires assessing architectural readiness, integration requirements, security, operational impact, risk, and scalability rather than deploying technology for its own sake. Success in this role is measured by the quality and adaptability of the architecture, successful execution of advanced technology programs, reduction of technical and operational risk, customer adoption and realized value, and the Architect's ability to influence technical direction within the customer and Cisco. What You'll Do
- Define and shape enterprise-scale architectures for technically demanding environments, establishing target-state designs, standards, integration patterns, and multi-year roadmaps across Cisco and third-party technologies.
- Steer large, high-impact initiatives from architectural vision to execution, guiding critical decisions and coordinating sources across Cisco, customer, and provider organizations, regions, and business units.
- Evaluate and resolve intricate cross-architecture challenges, assessing alternatives, dependencies, scalability, security, operational considerations, and tradeoffs to remove barriers and improve customer outcomes.
- Serve as a technology strategist to customer executives and technology leaders, translating business priorities into clear recommendations and communicating choices, costs, implications, and consequences that support critical decisions.
- Assess and integrate AI, automation, and emerging technologies where they deliver measurable value, considering architectural fit, dependencies, governance, operational implications, and scalability.
- Influence Cisco technology and services strategy through customer insight, identifying recurring requirements, capability gaps, and emerging needs and translating them into actionable input for internal teams.
- Build technical capability across Cisco and customer teams by developing architects and engineers, establishing reusable practices and knowledge, and promoting consistency across engagements.
- Represent Cisco expertise with executive and industry audiences, guiding to strategic customer engagements, technical forums, Cisco Live, and relevant industry events.
The Customer Delivery Architect has a deep and broad architectural expertise across technology architectures and is a recognized technical authority for defining and leading architecture strategy for Cisco's largest and most sophisticated customers. The role combines expertise across an enterprise technology domains with an expansive understanding of enterprise architecture, business priorities, and technology operations to guide technology decisions and deliver solutions at scale. The Architect works directly with customer technology leaders, engineers, Cisco teams, and partners to define architectures and technology roadmaps that address requirements while preparing for future business and technology needs. This includes evaluating architectural options and tradeoffs; defining target-state architectures; guiding design, integration, migration, and implementation; and identifying technical, operational, and business risks. The role provides leadership across highly integrated customer environments that may span cross-architecture environments, observability, automation, AI, data platforms, and technologies. The Architect establishes architectural direction across these domains and ensures that individual technology decisions work together as a coherent enterprise architecture. As an architectural authority and leader, the CDA leads multidisciplinary and cross-vendor teams through complex programs and critical technical decisions. The role works across Cisco's technical, business, and services organizations, Customer Success, partners, and customer organizations to resolve architectural issues, remove technical barriers, and maintain alignment from strategy through implementation and adoption. The Architect also helps customers evaluate and integrate new technologies, including AI and intelligent automation, where they provide clear technical or business value. This requires assessing architectural readiness, integration requirements, security, operational impact, risk, and scalability rather than deploying technology for its own sake. Success in this role is measured by the quality and adaptability of the architecture, successful execution of advanced technology programs, reduction of technical and operational risk, customer adoption and realized value, and the Architect's ability to influence technical direction within the customer and Cisco. What You'll Do
- Define and shape enterprise-scale architectures for technically demanding environments, establishing target-state designs, standards, integration patterns, and multi-year roadmaps across Cisco and third-party technologies.
- Steer large, high-impact initiatives from architectural vision to execution, guiding critical decisions and coordinating systems across Cisco, customer, and provider organizations, regions, and business units.
- Evaluate and resolve intricate cross-architecture challenges, assessing alternatives, dependencies, scalability, security, operational considerations, and tradeoffs to remove barriers and improve customer outcomes.
- Serve as a technology strategist to customer executives and technology leaders, translating business priorities into clear recommendations and presenting choices, costs, implications, and consequences that support critical decisions.
- Assess and integrate AI, automation, and emerging technologies where they deliver measurable value, considering architectural fit, dependencies, governance, operational implications, and scalability.
- Influence Cisco technology and services strategy through customer insight, identifying recurring requirements, capability gaps, and emerging needs and translating them into actionable input for internal teams.
- Build technical capability across Cisco and customer teams by developing architects and engineers, establishing reusable practices and knowledge, and promoting consistency across engagements.
- Represent Cisco expertise with executive and industry audiences, guiding to strategic customer engagements, technical forums, Cisco Live, and relevant industry events.
Ideal candidate should have expertise in several of the areas below
- Routing & Switching: Nexus/NX-OS, SD-WAN, and Substation/OT Networking.
- Security & Policy: Cisco ISE, SD-WAN Security/Policy, and Out-of-Band (OOB) Management Security.
- Wireless & Collaboration: Meraki design, WLAN, and Cloud-managed Contact Center solutions.
- Contact Center: Healthcare, Observability, and AI. Business Alignment, Data Analytics, Splunk Positioning, Technical Leadership.
- Monitoring & Analytics: Nexus Dashboard Insights, Splunk, Thousand Eyes, and Cisco IQ.
- Data Center: TCAM management and Nexus 9K architecture.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelors + 12 years of related experience, or
- Masters + 8 years of related experience, or
- PhD + 5 years of related experience, or
- equivalent meaningful work experience
- Expert level (e.g., CCIE) or equivalent relevant certification expected
Preferred Qualifications
- Technical mastery in core architectures with extensive expertise across the enterprise technology landscape, including demonstrated ability to integrate Cisco and third-party technologies into cohesive, scalable solutions.
- Proven architectural authority in large, highly integrated customer environments, including defining long-term technology strategy, establishing architectural direction, and resolving critical cross-architecture challenges.
- Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-scale technology initiatives, maintaining architectural integrity and influencing critical decisions across multiple organizations, technology disciplines, and business units.
- Established credibility with executive and technology leaders, translating business priorities and highly technical concepts into clear strategies, recommendations, tradeoffs, and outcomes.
- Recognized technical influence within and beyond the immediate customer engagement, demonstrated through developing experienced technical resources, shaping technology or services direction, establishing reusable architecture practices, or representing technical expertise with executive and industry audiences.
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 $139,200.00 to $201,400.00 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:
$171,600.00 - $281,800.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$151,300.00 - $250,900.00
- 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.
