Chief of Staff, Cloud Engineering

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Meet the Team

At Cisco, we know that technology can connect, empower, and drive us. Our mission is to simplify technology so our customers can focus on what's most meaningful to them: their students, patients, customers, and businesses. We're making IT and networking easier, faster, and smarter with technology that simply works!

Your Impact

The Chief of Staff is a strategic advisor and operating partner to the Head of Cloud Engineering, working alongside his Senior Engineering Leadership Team. You will help establish, facilitate and drive the operating cadence of a rapidly growing engineering team. You will focus on building trust, improving coordination between teams, communicating with Cisco as a whole and most importantly assist the Head of Cloud Engineering and his senior staff on organization transformation. This is an Individual Contributor role and can be fully remote or based out of a Cisco office.

• Act as a sounding board to senior leadership on matters of strategy, team efficiency, and operations
• Hold the agenda for staff meetings
• Maintain a strategic backlog of topics for the leadership team
• Continuously look for opportunities to improve the operating cadence of the organization as it scales
• Drive strategic initiatives around developer happiness and quality
• Drive priorities through weekly meetings, tracking actions, and shaping off-sites
• Find opportunities to increase leadership team effectiveness based on an understanding of product, ops, and strategic needs of the company
• Lead engineering-wide strategy and planning processes (OKR planning, quality meetings, release planning, headcount planning, talent ops, budget, DEI, etc.) and represent the Head of Cloud Engineering in meetings when needed.
• Work hand-in-hand with colleagues on the Finance, People and Operations teams to drive employee happiness and engagement, recruiting efficiency, headcount allocation, training, facilities, budget management, etc. This includes reviewing budget proposals, vetting budget requests for merit and authenticity and monitoring spending.
• Drive a communication plan that builds awareness of the team vision, key accomplishments, and impact throughout the organization.
• Help ensure our recruiting efforts and hiring process are streamlined, attract top talent, and build on our diverse, inclusive, people-first culture. Evolve the organization design, headcount forecasting, and staffing plan against team strategies and product priorities.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience working in a software product environment (ideally SaaS) supporting engineering/operations functions or similar proven experience in a Chief of Staff role.
• Experience in executive-level advising and interdepartmental collaboration.
• Excellent relationship building skills: you influence, persuade, and build trust across your organizations.
• Excellent analysis and problem-solving skills: you see the bigger picture, seek root causes, synthesize details, and break down obstacles into manageable work.
• Exceptional written and verbal and communication skills, and a refined skill in tailoring messages to specific audiences in their preferred channels.
• Comfort with ambiguity and a bias towards action and experimentation to drive progress.
• A growth mindset, boundless creativity and adaptability, high situational awareness.