Customer Engagements – Executive Escalations & Incident Management (CE EEIM)

About the Team

The Customer Engagements Executive Escalations and Incident Management (CE EEIM) team manages high-severity customer escalations and catastrophic incidents on behalf of Cisco’s top executives. Working closely with TAC Duty Managers, engineers, leadership and any other required stakeholders, the team ensures urgent engagement of resources to resolve issues that impact critical services, customer business continuity and, in some cases, public well-being.

Role Overview –Core Responsibilities

This role has two primary responsibilities:

• Handling Catastrophic Outages: Lead real-time incident management for high-severity outages, ensuring rapid remediation, clear communication, and confidence in Cisco’s response.

• Executive Escalations: Manage escalations from senior executives (up to CEO), representing them with customers and cross-functional teams, ensuring issues are resolved efficiently while maintaining ongoing executive-level communication.

You will also support other Customer Engagements initiatives, including preparing leadership for customer visits and contributing to messaging and process improvements. 

Key Responsibilities

• Lead real-time incident management for catastrophic outages, collaborating across TAC, Customer Engagements, Sales, Engineering, and other Cisco teams.

• Manage executive-level escalations (up to CEO) through to resolution, identifying and engaging the right Cisco or partner resources.

• Translate complex technical issues into concise, executive-level communications for leadership and customers.

• Directly engage in customer troubleshooting calls to reinforce confidence in Cisco.

• Act independently with strong situational awareness, quickly assessing business impact and risk, and escalating when necessary.

• Prepare executives with escalation insights ahead of customer and partner engagements.

• Support executive messaging and other Customer Engagements initiatives.

• Lead virtual teams, drive accountability, and deliver timely updates.

Additional Role & Responsibilities

• May be required to work non-standard business hours to ensure timely resolution of incidents (remote tools/devices will be provided).

• Participate in on-call rotation as first responder for catastrophic outages and executive escalations.

• Maintain status of all active cases using appropriate Cisco tools.

• Leverage relationships across Cisco escalation communities to ensure coverage during periods like year-end shutdowns.

• Partner with other CE teams to identify customer experience insights and develop executive-level messaging that drives business improvements.

Minimum Qualifications

• Strong executive communication skills (verbal and written), fluent in English.

• Proven ability to assess critical situations, perform risk assessments, and mobilize resources for resolution.

• Leadership skills to guide virtual teams and influence without direct authority.

• Strong time management, prioritization, influencing, and negotiation skills.

• Ability to consolidate data from multiple sources into coherent executive messaging.

• Project management skills to organize and deliver run-the-business activities.

• Strong sense of ownership, impartiality, and integrity.

• BS in Business, Technology/Engineering, Communications, or equivalent experience.

• Familiarity with Cisco escalation processes and organizational structure (or ability to quickly learn).

• Sound business and analytical skills.

• Previous customer-facing experience preferred.

Mindset & Values

We are looking for someone who thrives under pressure, adapts quickly to changing priorities, and acts with integrity and accountability. Our culture demands we do what is best for the customer and for Cisco—demonstrating a “do whatever it takes” mindset, flexibility, teamwork, and proven leadership.

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.