Sr. Customer Success Solutions Architect

The application window is expected to close on: 12/27/2026

This is a remote role from anywhere in the USA.

Meet the Team

Isovalent, now part of Cisco, was founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF, and builds open-source software and enterprise solutions for the networking, security, and observability needs of modern infrastructure. Isovalent engineering also builds Cisco Hypershield, and Customer Success Architects work directly alongside the engineers who design it!

The Customer Success Architect team is a distributed group of subject matter experts in data-center networking, segmentation, and security. CSAs turn a customer's investment in Cisco Hypershield and the Cisco Nexus N9300 Series Smart Switches into a deployed, fully adopted part of their data center, owning the journey from onboarding through expansion and guiding customers across the NetOps and NetSecOps boundary the Smart Switch builds, where NX-OS manages the network fabric and Hypershield governs the security policy enforced on the switch.

CSAs are trusted advisors who bring deep networking and segmentation expertise to ensure customers run reliable production workloads. As collaborators and problem solvers, they readily coordinate across engineering, support, partners, product, and marketing to bring the best of Cisco and Isovalent to the customer. They are also strong coaches, able to distill new concepts and present solutions and their tradeoffs clearly. Above all, Customer Success Architects are outstanding teammates!

Your Impact

• Own the onboarding and adoption journey for assigned accounts, from initial deployment of the N9300 Smart Switches and Hypershield through to confident, expanding production use
• Guide customers through Hypershield controller design and deployment, orchestrating the teams that implement it across their virtualization environment and the on-premises control plane
• Drive value realization by helping customers design policy and stand up real use cases in production: top-of-rack segmentation and enforcement, zone-based segmentation, and secure data-center interconnect
• Build deep technical relationships with key NetOps and NetSecOps stakeholders as their trusted advisor, and run workshops and enablement sessions that accelerate adoption
• Identify and clear adoption blockers, working with engineering and support to escalate and resolve customer issues
• Build reusable assets that scale customer success, such as training material, reference architectures, and documentation that help customers deploy and run reliably in production

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of related experience, Master’s degree with 6+ years of related experience, or PhD with 3+ years of related experience.
• Experience with Cisco Nexus / NX-OS in production, including L3 routing, VRFs, and fabric operations; equivalent experience on another major vendor accepted
• Customer-facing experience as a solutions advisor, CSM, PS consultant, or SE, owning the technical relationship and outcomes
• Professional work experience with enterprise virtualization and VM/appliance deployment, able to guide and troubleshoot a hypervisor-based install (VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, Proxmox, or similar)
• Experience with Linux systems in production, including troubleshooting

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience onboarding and deploying solutions into customer production, including guiding a customer's own team through the work
• VXLAN EVPN fabric knowledge and where the Smart Switch fits within it (top-of-rack, zone segmentation, data-center interconnect), enough to advise a customer's network team
• Network segmentation and firewall policy design
• Familiarity with the NetOps/NetSecOps operating split in data-center security
• Operational Kubernetes familiarity, including YAML-based configuration, with enough depth to deploy and tailor a Kubernetes-based platform installation to a customer's environment
• CCNP Data Center, CCNP Enterprise, DevNet Professional, CCIE Data Center, CCIE Enterprise, or DevNet Expert (a plus)
• NX-OS automation and APIs (NX-API, NETCONF/RESTCONF, gNMI, Ansible) and REST API-based policy automation; Nexus Dashboard experience a strong plus
  

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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 $160,800.00 to $214,100.00 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:

$160,800.00 - $253,200.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$142,900.00 - $246,200.00

* 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.