Senior Product Manager - AI Safety and Security (Hybrid)

Cisco•San Jose, CA

2d•$194,600 - $285,700•Hybrid

About The Position

Cisco is hiring a Senior Product Manager to lead a significant AI Security product domain within Cisco AI Defense. The role has end-to-end accountability for customer outcomes, product strategy, roadmap, execution, launch, adoption, and ongoing evolution. The position is based at Cisco’s San Jose office in a hybrid model. The Product Manager will shape a 12–18 month strategy and longer-term vision, translating changes in AI technologies, cybersecurity, customer needs, competitive dynamics, and emerging threats into product priorities and investment decisions. The role includes developing expertise across the AI Security lifecycle, identifying market opportunities and product adjacencies, and creating multi-quarter roadmaps with measurable outcomes, milestones, dependencies, and priorities. The role works closely with enterprise customers and cross-functional teams, including Engineering, Design, Security Research, Architecture, Product Marketing, Sales, Customer Experience, and partners. It requires technical judgment across modern AI architectures and technologies, and the ability to turn emerging problems into reusable platform capabilities, product primitives, workflows, and integrations. The Product Manager will make trade-offs across security efficacy, customer experience, architecture, scalability, performance, cost, privacy, deployment models, technical debt, and time to market. The successful candidate will define and measure product outcomes, influence decisions beyond their immediate domain, represent Cisco with customers and partners, communicate product strategy and differentiation, and help enable Sales, SEs, partners, and customers. They will also contribute to the effectiveness of the broader Product organization through sound judgment, technical depth, mentoring, customer insight, and high standards for strategy and execution.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree with 12+ years, Master’s degree with 8+ years, or PhD with 5+ years of related experience.
Product management experience building and managing enterprise SaaS products, with end-to-end ownership spanning strategy, discovery, requirements, roadmap, delivery, launch, and customer adoption.
Experience owning technically complex products or significant product domains and working with Engineering, Architecture, Design, and/or Research teams on significant product and technical decisions.
Experience working directly with enterprise customers to understand complex problems, establish product direction, validate strategy, and drive adoption.
Experience developing multi-quarter product strategies and influencing execution across multiple teams, product areas, or organizational boundaries.

Nice To Haves

Experience building AI/ML, Generative AI, agentic AI, cybersecurity, cloud, developer platform, or application security products.
Understanding of the AI ecosystem, including foundation models, open-weight models, AI applications, agents, agentic frameworks, developer platforms, AI infrastructure, and model serving.
Experience in AI Security domains such as AI governance, AI supply chain security, AI validation and red teaming, runtime protection and guardrails, application security, model security, identity, policy, or behavioral security.
Technical fluency with APIs, SDKs, cloud architectures, distributed systems, AI/ML systems, developer workflows, integrations, and enterprise software platforms.
Ability to reason about AI Security threats, architectures, emerging technologies, and technical trade-offs and translate insights into product strategy.
Ability to identify market opportunities and product adjacencies and translate emerging technologies, competitive changes, and customer patterns into products or platform capabilities.
Experience conducting competitive analysis that considers architecture, differentiation, ecosystem position, business model, and product strategy implications.
Strong product judgment and ability to make investment and prioritization decisions under ambiguity.
Track record of driving execution, launch readiness, customer adoption, measurement, and iteration beyond product definition.
Ability to influence senior Engineering, Research, Design, GTM, partner, and product stakeholders and align teams across organizational boundaries without direct authority.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to engage in technical discussions, strategic customer conversations, and executive-level strategy.

Responsibilities

Own a significant AI Security product domain within Cisco AI Defense, with accountability for customer outcomes, strategy, roadmap, execution, launch, adoption, and evolution.
Shape a 12–18 month product strategy and longer-term vision based on AI technologies, cybersecurity, enterprise customer needs, competitive dynamics, emerging threats, and industry trends.
Develop expertise across the AI Security lifecycle and identify product adjacencies, customer problems, and market opportunities.
Translate changes in foundation models, open-weight models, agents, agentic frameworks, AI infrastructure, and security techniques into product implications and investment decisions.
Create multi-quarter roadmaps with measurable outcomes, priorities, milestones, dependencies, and investment choices.
Lead customer discovery with enterprise security leaders, AI/ML teams, developers, application owners, risk teams, and partners.
Synthesize customer and market requirements into scalable product and architectural decisions.
Analyze competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, architectures, buying patterns, and market positions, and apply insights to product strategy and roadmap decisions.
Partner with Engineering, Design, Security Research, and Architecture to explore and prototype approaches, assess feasibility, and develop differentiated product capabilities.
Evaluate AI architectures and technologies, including foundation models, open-weight models, AI applications, agents, agentic frameworks, model APIs, RAG, MCP, AI gateways, SDKs, cloud AI platforms, and distributed deployment environments.
Identify opportunities to turn emerging AI Security problems into reusable platform capabilities, product primitives, workflows, and ecosystem integrations.
Drive product and technical trade-offs involving security efficacy, customer experience, architecture, scalability, performance, cost, privacy, deployment models, technical debt, and time to market.
Define and monitor outcomes for customer value, adoption, usage, security efficacy, product quality, operational performance, and business impact; refine strategy based on results.
Influence strategy and roadmap decisions across product areas, identifying cross-product dependencies and opportunities that strengthen AI Defense and Cisco’s AI Security portfolio.
Align Engineering, Product, Design, Security Research, Product Marketing, Sales, Customer Experience, partners, and other organizations around strategy, architecture, priorities, and execution.
Represent the AI Security domain with strategic customers, partners, ecosystem participants, and Cisco leadership.
Communicate Cisco’s product strategy, technology choices, differentiation, and perspective on emerging AI Security problems.
Help develop positioning and technical narratives that explain Cisco AI Defense capabilities to Sales, SEs, partners, and customers.
Mentor and support the broader Product organization through product judgment, technical depth, constructive challenge, and customer insight.

Benefits

Medical insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
401(k) plan with Cisco matching contribution
Paid parental leave
Short- and long-term disability coverage
Basic life insurance
Paid holidays
Floating holiday for non-exempt employees
Paid birthday off
Paid year-end holiday shutdown
Personal wellness days
Paid vacation or flexible vacation time off, depending on employee classification
Paid sick time
Additional paid time away may be requested for critical or emergency family issues
Optional paid volunteer days
Annual bonuses for eligible non-sales employees
Performance-based incentive pay for employees on sales plans
Cisco restricted stock unit grants may be available, subject to eligibility and continued employment