Sourcing Commodity Manager (remote)
About The Position
As a Technical Sourcing Commodity Manager for Memory and Storage, you own technical decisions and cost outcomes for memory and storage commodities by partnering closely with hardware engineering, manufacturing, and supplier engineering teams. The role sits at the intersection of engineering, manufacturing, and supplier technology development, helping bring new Cisco products to life. You will influence design decisions, enable supplier technical readiness, and remove development barriers from concept through mass production. The position directly supports Cisco’s ability to deliver innovative, high-performance networking and AI systems at scale by ensuring designs are manufacturable, resilient, and production-ready while meeting performance and reliability requirements. It is engineering-facing and technically hands-on, requiring comfort with detailed discussions about memory and storage design, materials, and manufacturing processes. Success requires experience supporting hardware designs through development, manufacturing, and scale, including technical problem-solving with supplier engineering teams. Cisco’s Global Supplier Management organization works with hardware engineering, manufacturing, and suppliers to enable next-generation networking and AI technologies. The team emphasizes early technical engagement, supplier capability development, and execution excellence so designs can scale from prototype through mass production.
Requirements
- At least 7 years of technical experience in memory and storage technologies, especially NAND solutions such as SSD, eMMC, UFS, and uSD, including design support and manufacturing engagement.
- At least 10 years of experience working directly with hardware design engineering teams on New Product Introductions (NPI).
- At least 10 years of experience engaging suppliers on technical development, qualification, and manufacturing readiness, cost negotiations, should-cost modeling, contract management, and obtaining quotations through RFQ/RFI processes.
Nice To Haves
- Master’s degree in mechanical engineering or a related field.
- Experience with memory and storage technology or memory suppliers.
- Familiarity with AI system architectures and high-performance computing platforms.
- Excellent technical communication, problem-solving, and stakeholder engagement skills.
Responsibilities
- Partner with Hardware Design Engineering, Component Engineering, and Manufacturing to align supplier technologies with Cisco’s product architecture and roadmap.
- Participate in technical design reviews with internal teams and suppliers, evaluating feasibility, manufacturability, and performance tradeoffs.
- Drive early supplier technical engagement for new designs and architectures.
- Lead supplier technology roadmap discussions and assess design approaches, materials, processes, and manufacturing capabilities.
- Serve as a technical escalation point for supplier-related design, yield, reliability, and manufacturability issues.
- Hold suppliers accountable for development milestones, technical readiness, and qualification schedules.
- Lead and own supplier technical readiness from prototype through mass production.
- Facilitate hands-on collaboration between supplier engineering teams and Cisco engineers to resolve design and manufacturing issues.
- Support ramp readiness, yield improvement, and transition from NPI into sustained production.
- Drive value engineering initiatives that improve cost efficiency without compromising technical performance or reliability.
- Identify and develop second-source strategies that strengthen design robustness and supply flexibility.
- Support geographic diversification and non-China manufacturing strategies.
- Identify technical and manufacturing risks and develop mitigation plans with engineering teams and suppliers.
- Lead supplier reviews covering technology readiness, NPI execution, yield, capacity, and risk.
- Provide clear technical status updates to cross-functional leadership.
- Partner with Component Engineering on quality investigations and corrective actions.
- Drive continuous improvement using diverse methodologies.
- Define technical KPIs and enable data-driven execution across suppliers.
- Take on additional responsibilities based on evolving business priorities.
Benefits
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
- Paid parental leave
- Short- and long-term disability coverage
- Basic life insurance
- Cisco restricted stock unit grants may be available, subject to eligibility and vesting conditions.
- Paid holidays and a floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- Paid birthday day off
- Paid year-end holiday shutdown
- Paid 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 may be available for non-sales roles, subject to Cisco policies.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
