At Cisco, we’re building the bridge to a digital future by investing in national digitization. Our Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program is a strategic partnership platform that drives innovation, builds digital skills, and accelerates the digital agenda of nations. The CDA Program Leader will be instrumental in defining, executing, and scaling our strategic initiatives in KSA, leading a team to achieve significant national impact.
Key Responsibilities:
- Strategic Program Leadership & Portfolio Management: Lead the overall CDA Country program, defining, developing, and executing the CDA strategy for KSA, aligning with national digital agendas and Cisco's global objectives. Manage portfolio priorities and investments to maximize impact and alignment.
- End-to-End Program Management Oversight: Provide strategic oversight and direction for a portfolio of CDA projects, ensuring alignment with program goals, timely delivery, and adherence to budget and scope. Coordinate closely with Global CDA initiatives and lead Country Program Review Calls.
- Team Leadership & Development: Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of project managers and specialists, fostering a high-performance culture and ensuring effective resource allocation across initiatives.
- Executive Stakeholder Engagement: Cultivate and manage strategic relationships with high-level government officials, C-suite executives, key partners, and internal Cisco leadership to secure buy-in, align objectives, and drive collaborative success.
- Financial Oversight & Management: Oversee CDA financials, including spending, forecasts, revenues, and linearity. Manage the strategic planning, allocation, and management of program-wide budgets and resources to maximize impact and efficiency.
- Risk, Compliance & Opportunity Management: Proactively identify strategic risks and opportunities across the program, developing comprehensive mitigation plans. Ensure program compliance with all relevant internal policies and external regulations.
- Performance Measurement & Reporting: Establish and track key performance indicators (KPIs) and impact metrics for the entire CDA program. Manage all program reporting, including biweekly updates, quarterly financial updates, forecasts, and bi-annual reviews. Prepare and deliver executive-level reports on program status, strategic milestones, and overall performance to internal and external stakeholders.
- Cross-functional Orchestration & Communication: Drive seamless collaboration and alignment across various Cisco functions (sales, engineering, marketing, operations, legal, finance) to ensure successful execution and integration of CDA initiatives. Align with Marketing and Communications for external program communication and with internal stakeholders for effective internal communication.
- Innovation & Thought Leadership: Champion innovation within the CDA program, identifying emerging trends and technologies to enhance program offerings and position Cisco as a leading digital transformation partner.
- Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in program management, strategic consulting, or a senior leadership role, ideally within a technology or public sector environment focused on digital transformation.
- Proven track record of successfully leading and delivering large-scale, complex programs involving multiple stakeholders, from strategic initiation to successful closure and impact measurement.
- Exceptional strategic planning, executive communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills, with experience engaging at the highest levels of government and enterprise.
- Demonstrated ability to lead and develop high-performing teams.
- Proficiency in advanced program and project management tools (e.g., Jira, Asana, MS Project, Smartsheet, advanced Excel) and strategic planning frameworks.
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.
Skills Required
- 10+ years of experience in program management, strategic consulting, or senior leadership, ideally in technology or public-sector digital transformation
- Proven success leading and delivering large-scale, complex, multi-stakeholder programs from strategic initiation through closure and impact measurement
- Exceptional strategic planning, executive communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills
- Experience engaging senior government officials and enterprise executives
- Demonstrated ability to lead and develop high-performing teams
- Proficiency with advanced program and project management tools, including Jira, Asana, MS Project, Smartsheet, or advanced Excel
- Knowledge of strategic planning frameworks
Cisco Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Cisco and has not been reviewed or approved by Cisco.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is described as robust with multiple plan options and access to onsite/virtual LifeConnections Health Centers on major campuses. Company materials also highlight mental-health resources and comprehensive preventive care, supporting strong core medical benefits.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time away includes company‑wide recharge days, a paid birthday, a year‑end shutdown, and paid Critical Time Off for emergencies. Paid volunteer days further expand opportunities to step away and recharge.
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Parental & Family Support — Policies include a global minimum for paid parental leave for primary caregivers, caregiving concierge services, and on‑site children’s learning centers in select locations. In the U.S., family‑building support is consolidated under Carrot with a defined lifetime maximum, indicating structured assistance across fertility, preservation, adoption, and surrogacy.
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Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) enables people to make powerful connections--whether in business, education, philanthropy, or creativity. Cisco hardware, software, and service offerings are used to create the Internet solutions that make networks possible--providing easy access to information anywhere, at any time. Cisco was founded in 1984 by a small group of computer scientists from Stanford University. Since the company's inception, Cisco engineers have been leaders in the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking technologies. Today, with more than 71,000 employees worldwide, this tradition of innovation continues with industry-leading products and solutions in the company's core development areas of routing and switching, as well as in advanced technologies such as home networking, IP telephony, optical networking, security, storage area networking, and wireless technology. In addition to its products, Cisco provides a broad range of service offerings, including technical support and advanced services. Cisco sells its products and services, both directly through its own sales force as well as through its channel partners, to large enterprises, commercial businesses, service providers, and consumers.
