Client Director, Cloud & Strategic AI

Arista Networks•San Jose, CA

About The Position

The Client Director owns Arista's end-to-end relationship with one or more of the world's largest cloud providers and frontier AI labs, with accountability for account strategy, revenue, and customer trust. The role serves high-impact customers building large AI training and inference clusters, and has high executive visibility. It is part of a Bay Area-based team covering Arista's most strategic hyperscale and AI customers, which expect technically credible, peer-level partnerships. The Client Director develops and executes multi-year account plans aligned with customers' AI and cloud roadmaps, leads strategic RFPs and competitive evaluations, structures commercial agreements, and owns forecasting and the quote-to-PO-to-delivery process. The role also handles customer escalations, advocates for customer requirements within Arista, coordinates strategic commitments across internal teams, and shares customer and competitive intelligence.

Requirements

12+ years selling data center networking, optical, silicon, or cloud infrastructure.
At least 5 years owning a hyperscale, cloud service provider, or frontier AI account.
Track record of closing large, multi-year deals (eight- and nine-figure programs) and consistently exceeding quota.
Working technical fluency in data center fabrics, including leaf-spine and AI back-end networks, BGP/EVPN, 400G/800G Ethernet, RoCE and congestion management, DCI, and optics.
Ability to engage credibly with a customer's principal network engineer.
Understanding of the NOS landscape, including EOS, SONiC, FBOSS, and other disaggregated options, and how hyperscalers evaluate them.
Experience running complex RFPs and competitive evaluations against well-funded incumbents and white-box/ODM alternatives.
Comfort with pricing strategy, reseller and channel structures, non-standard terms, and working with legal, finance, and supply chain.
Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or business, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Background as a sales engineer or network architect before moving into account leadership.
Direct experience with AI training and inference cluster build-outs, GPU clouds, or neo-cloud providers.
Existing relationships with network engineering, infrastructure, or supply leaders at major cloud providers or AI labs.
Familiarity with Ultra Ethernet, scale-out versus scale-up networking, and next-generation switch silicon roadmaps.

Responsibilities

Build and run multi-year account plans tied to customer AI and cloud roadmaps, including cluster build-outs, front-end and back-end fabrics, DCI, and next-generation silicon transitions.
Develop relationships across customer organizations, from network engineering and architecture to supply chain, procurement, finance, legal, and executive sponsors.
Anticipate customer needs 12–24 months ahead and position Arista before an RFP is issued.
Lead strategic RFPs and competitive evaluations from qualification through award, coordinating sales engineers, product management, engineering, and executives.
Develop competitive positioning against white-box/ODM alternatives, merchant-silicon disaggregation, and incumbent vendors.
Position Arista hardware with EOS or customer-selected NOS options, including SONiC and FBOSS.
Structure pricing, multi-year commitments, reseller and channel paths, and commercial and financing models.
Own account forecasting and the quote-to-PO-to-delivery chain, identifying discrepancies before they reach the customer.
Partner with supply chain and operations to secure capacity and manage lead times for large, time-critical builds.
Personally handle customer escalations, including field issues and commercial disputes, and ensure they are resolved.
Translate customer requirements into input for product management and engineering roadmaps.
Drive alignment with Arista executives, finance, legal, and supply chain on non-standard terms and strategic commitments.
Share account intelligence and competitive insight across the team.