Senior Product Manager - AI Safety and Security (Hybrid)

Cisco•San Jose, CA

3d•$194,600 - $285,700•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Product Manager owns a significant AI Security product domain within Cisco AI Defense, with end-to-end accountability for customer outcomes, strategy, roadmap, execution, launch, adoption, and product evolution. The role shapes a 12–18 month strategy and longer-term vision by applying knowledge of AI technologies, cybersecurity, enterprise customers, competitors, emerging threats, and industry trends. It develops expertise across the AI Security lifecycle, identifies new product adjacencies and market opportunities, and translates shifts in AI technologies and security techniques into product direction and investment decisions. The position turns strategy into multi-quarter roadmaps with measurable outcomes, priorities, milestones, dependencies, and investment choices. It leads enterprise customer discovery and synthesizes needs into scalable product and architectural decisions. Working with Engineering, Design, Security Research, and Architecture, the product manager evaluates technical feasibility and develops differentiated enterprise capabilities. The role requires technical fluency across modern AI architectures and technologies, and seeks to create reusable platform capabilities, product primitives, workflows, and ecosystem integrations. The product manager drives trade-offs across security efficacy, customer experience, architecture, scalability, performance, cost, privacy, deployment models, technical debt, and time to market. It defines and monitors product outcomes, influences decisions beyond its immediate domain, and aligns cross-functional Cisco teams, customers, and partners. As a senior AI Security domain leader, the role communicates Cisco’s strategy and differentiation, supports clear product positioning and technical narratives, and helps improve the broader Product organization through judgment, technical depth, mentoring, and high standards for strategy and execution. This position is based in Cisco’s San Jose office and follows a hybrid work model.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree and 12+ years, Master’s degree and 8+ years, or PhD and 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 analyze 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 with competitive analysis that examines architecture, differentiation, ecosystem position, business model, and strategic implications beyond feature comparisons.
Strong product judgment and demonstrated ability to make investment and prioritization decisions under ambiguity.
Track record of driving execution beyond product definition, including launch readiness, customer adoption, measurement, and iteration.
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 communication in technical discussions, strategic customer conversations, and executive-level strategy.

Responsibilities

Own an AI Security product domain within Cisco AI Defense, from strategy and discovery through roadmap, delivery, launch, adoption, and evolution.
Shape a 12–18 month product strategy and longer-term vision based on AI technology, cybersecurity, customer, competitive, threat, and industry insights.
Develop expertise across the AI Security lifecycle and identify customer problems, product adjacencies, and market opportunities.
Translate changes in AI technologies 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; turn insights into scalable product and architecture decisions.
Assess competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, architectures, buying patterns, and differentiation, and use findings to inform strategy and roadmaps.
Partner with Engineering, Design, Security Research, and Architecture to explore and prototype approaches, assess feasibility, and develop differentiated capabilities.
Evaluate modern AI architectures and technologies, including models, AI applications, agents, agentic frameworks, model APIs, RAG, MCP, AI gateways, SDKs, cloud AI platforms, and distributed deployment environments.
Identify opportunities to create reusable platform capabilities, product primitives, workflows, and ecosystem integrations.
Drive technical and product trade-offs involving security efficacy, customer experience, architecture, scalability, performance, cost, privacy, deployment models, technical debt, and time to market.
Define and use measurable outcomes for customer value, adoption, usage, security efficacy, product quality, operational performance, and business impact to refine strategy and investment.
Influence strategy and roadmap decisions beyond the immediate product domain, including cross-product dependencies and portfolio opportunities.
Align Engineering, Product, Design, Security Research, Product Marketing, Sales, Customer Experience, partners, and other Cisco organizations around strategy, architecture, priorities, and execution.
Represent the AI Security domain with strategic customers, partners, ecosystem participants, and Cisco leadership; communicate product strategy, technology choices, differentiation, and perspectives on emerging problems.
Help develop product 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, customer insight, and high standards.

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
Employee birthday paid day off
Paid year-end holiday shutdown
Personal wellness days
Flexible vacation time off for eligible exempt employees
Paid vacation for non-exempt employees
Sick time off
Additional paid time away may be requested for critical or emergency family issues
Optional paid volunteer days
Annual bonuses for eligible non-sales employees
Potential Cisco restricted stock unit grants