Role Overview

The Strategic Pursuit Lead for Japan, within the Strategic Engagement Team (SET), is a senior individual contributor role responsible for supporting and leading complex, high-value strategic sales pursuits in the Japanese market.

This role focuses on hands-on deal execution, working closely with account teams, sales leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders to structure, govern, and progress large, non-standard opportunities from qualification through closure.

The role plays a key part in ensuring deal quality, execution discipline, and clear value articulation, rather than owning regional transformation programs or organizational leadership responsibilities.

Because this role engages with Japan’s largest enterprise customers, native-level Japanese and business-level English are required.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Pursuit Execution (Japan)

• Support and, where required, lead end-to-end pursuit activities for complex strategic deals in Japan
• Contribute to deal strategy development, including qualification, solution positioning, and capture planning
• Apply established governance and qualification frameworks to ensure disciplined execution

2. Executive & Customer Engagement

• Support engagement with senior customer stakeholders in collaboration with account teams
• Help articulate Cisco’s value proposition through clear, structured narratives and proposals
• Align internal stakeholders around deal priorities, risks, and decision timelines

3. Business Value & Commercial Support

• Contribute to business value discussions, including ROI/TCO considerations and customer success metrics
• Partner with Finance and Sales teams to support commercial structures and deal economics
• Assist in ensuring proposed solutions align with customer business objectives

4. Cross-Functional Deal Orchestration

• Act as a coordination point across Sales, Engineering, CX, Finance, Legal, and Partners
• Support pursuit cadence, milestone tracking, and escalation management
• Share best practices in deal storytelling, positioning, and competitive response

5. Market & Competitive Awareness

• Maintain awareness of Japan-specific market dynamics, competitors, and regulatory considerations
• Provide input to account teams on positioning and pursuit strategy as needed

6. Contribution to Japan SET Practices

• Apply and localize SET methodologies within Japan-based pursuits
• Share lessons learned and successful deal patterns within the Japan SET community
• Support visibility into strategic pipeline trends for leadership discussions

Required Qualifications

• Native-level Japanese; business-level English
• 7–10+ years of experience in enterprise sales, strategic pursuits, consulting, or complex deal support roles
• Experience contributing to large, multi-stakeholder, non-standard deals
• Solid understanding of value-based selling and commercial deal structures
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in cloud, cybersecurity, networking, or digital transformation environments
• Exposure to large Japanese enterprise customers or regulated industries
• Consulting or structured deal-support background is a plus

Why Cisco? 

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. 

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.