Director, Associate General Counsel

Director, Associate General Counsel - ThousandEyes

What You’ll Do

The Product Legal team differentiates itself through a deep understanding of Cisco’s products and offers. We serve as the primary Legal partner to Cisco Engineering and the commercial teams that build and commercialize Cisco products.  This role will have lead responsibility for supporting the ThousandEyes business, including managing a team of attorneys and advising the ThousandEyes executive team. ThousandEyes gives companies a real-time map of how their customers and employees reach and experience critical apps and services across traditional, SD-WAN, internet and cloud provider networks and is one of the fastest growing SaaS businesses within Cisco today.   

We are looking for a highly motivated, solution-driven and tech-savvy people leader who is excited about working in a dynamic environment and who will:

• Develop deep knowledge of ThousandEyes products, business processes, and go-to-market strategies.
• Develop close working relationships with the sales, engineering, operations, and finance teams building and bringing products to market.
• Provide legal advice across intellectual property, data protection and privacy, and market access issues and applicable regulatory frameworks.
• Adeptly assess and balance legal risk while enabling business outcomes through pragmatic guidance.
• Manage, energize, and empower a team of dedicated ThousandEyes attorneys, including mentoring and training early-in-career team members.
• Develop and refine legal strategy for a growing SaaS business in collaboration with other Legal team members and the ThousandEyes executive team.
• Build a strong culture of trust across the team and with key business and legal partners.
• Enable the business to leverage Cisco knowledge and experience while balancing the need to move with agility and flexibility.
• Be a utility player across legal disciplines and a connecting force across cross-functional teams.
• Lead with problem solving, curiosity, drive, and thoughtfulness.

Who You Are

You must have excellent legal and business judgment, demonstrated people leadership capabilities, strong critical thinking, and communication (written and oral) skills, and a proven work ethic. You should be able to work directly with executives and early in career team members alike, be self-directed, in addition to collaborative and flexible with the ability to thrive in a collegial, fast-paced environment. You must be able to develop and support a dynamic legal strategy for the ThousandEyes SaaS business, taking into account legal and business considerations, customer experience and market conditions.  You must problem solve with speed, simplicity and organization and lead with empathy and sound judgment. Advanced executive engagement and interpersonal skills and influencing abilities are a must. Success requires self-motivation, confidence, rigor, diligence and a passion to learn and contribute.

Your Qualifications

• Bar admission in any jurisdiction with good standing, with a minimum of 12+ years of relevant experience at a law firm and/or in-house (the ideal candidate will have both law firm and in-house experience.)
• Outstanding contract negotiation and drafting skills, including extensive experience negotiating complex licensing arrangements and working with strategic partners, including third parties.
• Solid knowledge of intellectual property, product development, product integration, data use/residency/ownership, and open source issues, with software and SaaS expertise, and go to market experience.
• Experience and familiarity with data privacy such as GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws (CIPP/E certification is a plus.)
• Strong collaboration skills for close partnerships with business, technical and Legal team members.
• Ability to understand and synthesize complex issues, assess legal and business risk, and provide concise, plain English, business-focused advice, including to executive leadership.
• Extensive experience in building, developing, and motivating high functioning teams, including in a hybrid world.
• Ability to build credibility, advocate, influence, and become a trusted adviser to the business and Legal team members.
• Intellectual curiosity to learn about new technologies and understand product architecture.
• Business-centric approach to handling complex legal issues, while demonstrating grace and a positive attitude.
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to prioritize, lead and deliver on simultaneous projects/deliverables under deadline pressure.
• Drive and commitment to contribute to talent development, legal strategy, and cross-functional initiatives across the Legal organization.
• Humility and a sense of humor.

Our Legal Department

We are a team of 450+ Legal and Compliance professionals in 25+ countries committed to fostering an inclusive and collaborative environment as we work together to drive Cisco’s success. We serve as trusted advisors to the business – problem solving, navigating complexities, and enabling transformation along the way. We use technology to make life easier – leveraging Cisco’s innovative networking and collaboration tools to enable flexible, hybrid work. And we embrace the responsibility to be a force for good – donating our time and expertise through pro bono and community impact initiatives.

Why Cisco?

As billions of things connect to the Internet and massive amounts of data are distributed ever more widely, our customers are faced with growing complexity and risks to their security. Cisco is focused on delivering highly secure, intelligent platforms for the digital world. We are passionate about reinventing networking, unlocking the power of data, enriching the employee and customer experience, and deploying security everywhere. In all of these things, the network is the common denominator.

At Cisco, each person brings their unique talents to work as a team and make a difference. Yes, our technology changes the way the world works, lives, plays and learns, but our edge comes from our people.

• We connect everything – people, process, data and things – and we use those connections to change our world for the better.
• We innovate everywhere - From launching a new era of networking that adapts, learns and protects, to building Cisco Services that accelerate businesses and business results. Our technology powers entertainment, retail, healthcare, education and more – from Smart Cities to your everyday devices.
• We benefit everyone - We do all of this while striving for a culture that empowers every person to be the difference, at work and in our communities.

Colorful hair? Don’t care. Tattoos? Show off your ink. Like polka dots? That’s cool. Pop culture geek? Many of us are. Be you, with us! #WeAreCisco

US Vaccination Requirements

Cisco requires all U.S. employees to be fully vaccinated or have an approved religious or medical accommodation. Candidates accepting an offer must provide proof of vaccination status on their first day. If someone anticipates requesting an accommodation for this requirement, they must receive approval before the start date. Candidates receiving an offer will receive additional information about the accommodation process at the time of the offer. All offers of employment are contingent upon complying with Cisco's vaccination policy.