PR Manager, Office of the CTO

Responsibilities

• Strategic Storytelling & Discovery: Serve as a discovery engine for emerging narratives around Cisco's research innovations, open source contributions, and platform strategy—identifying white-space storytelling opportunities and translating complex technical breakthroughs into clear, audience-relevant narratives. Work deeply with research teams to uncover stories early, refine positioning based on market signals, and connect innovation work to broader business strategy.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Management: Partner with research, product, product marketing, and communications teams to align on narrative direction and ensure storytelling opportunities are identified and elevated early. Provide strategic counsel and clarity to technical teams on messaging and positioning, managing stakeholder expectations across matrixed environments.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Build strong partnerships with Cisco communications teams, bridging the gap in our storytelling between Cisco’s products today and innovations that will unlock future opportunities for our customers. Partner with global communications teams to amplify our work in region.
• Media Relations: Proactively build and nurture relationships with top-tier business, technology, trade and new media covering AI, quantum, distributed systems, developer topics and emerging infrastructure. Pitch stories with conviction, secure high-impact coverage, and drive message pull-through.
• Campaign Management: Own end-to-end campaign execution for launches and strategic initiatives—from strategy through measurement. Manage timelines, agency relationships, and multi-channel delivery, leveraging AI tools and automation to accelerate workflows without sacrificing editorial rigor. Lead coordination with other communications functions, including analyst relations, employees communications and digital communications.
• Strategic Counsel: Serve as a trusted strategic advisor to product, product marketing, and executive leadership. Bring external market perspective (competitive moves, media sentiment, industry trends) to internal decision-making.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in public relations, communications, or marketing (with at least 3 years in a PR or external communications role).
• Domain expertise in enterprise B2B technologies—particularly experience covering or communicating about networking, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, open source, emerging compute, or AI.
• Proven ability to synthesize complex technical information and translate it into clear, compelling narratives for diverse audiences (practitioners, C-suite, investors, media).
• Track record of building relationships with media, analysts, and influencers; demonstrated ability to secure coverage in relevant publications.
• Comfort with ambiguity and emerging technologies—ability to operate in spaces where categories are nascent, positioning is in flux, and narratives are still forming.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills—proven ability to work effectively with product, research, and technical teams; skilled at managing up, across, and down in matrixed environments.
• Self-starter mentality—bias toward discovery and action; ability to identify storytelling opportunities and refine narrative direction with minimal direction.
• Comfortable engaging with researchers, engineers, and product teams on technical depth while translating for external audiences.
• Strong writing and editorial judgment—ability to craft sharp, clear narratives and refine positioning based on market feedback.

Preferred

• Background at a tech company, or research-focused organization—where you've navigated rapid pivots, worn multiple hats, and moved fast with incomplete information.
• Experience in quantum computing, AI research, or infrastructure innovation—or demonstrated hunger to learn and build expertise in these spaces.
• Experience in communications roles with open source strategy and/or developer communities.
• Active in tech communities—well-networked with technologists, researchers, journalists; finger on the pulse of emerging trends and who carries narrative influence.

Benefits

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
• Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
• For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.
• Employees On Sales Plans Earn Performance-based Incentive Pay On Top Of Their Base Salary, Which Is Split Between Quota And Non-quota Components, Subject To The Applicable Cisco Plan. For Quota-based incentive pay, Cisco Typically Pays As Follows: .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota; 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%; 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation. For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.