PR Manager, Office of the CTO

Meet the Team 

Global Communications is a team of more than 150 best-in-class communications professionals. Our mission is to protect and improve Cisco's reputation through innovative and thought-provoking storytelling, execution excellence and transparency. The PR team is responsible for leading Cisco's corporate and technology PR programs, as well as crafting and delivering clear and compelling narratives that grab the attention of media and influencers. 

Your Impact 

As PR Manager for the Office of the CTO, you'll shape how the world understands Cisco's most forward-thinking innovation—from quantum computing breakthroughs to the emerging internet of agents. You'll operate at the intersection of cutting-edge research, open source strategy, and product innovation, telling stories about the hidden technologies and transformative shifts that define Cisco's future. This is a unique opportunity to be a strategic storyteller and discovery engine, uncovering and amplifying narratives that position Cisco as an innovation leader while working collaboratively across research, product, and communications teams. 

In this hybrid role, you'll split time between external visibility for Outshift (our incubation engine for emerging technologies) and broader strategic storytelling around other innovative technologies. You'll translate complex, nascent innovations into clear, compelling narratives for enterprise leaders, industry influencers, and developer communities. You'll serve as a thought partner to research and product teams, helping them recognize storytelling opportunities early, refine positioning, and navigate the ambiguity of innovation storytelling. You'll move with startup agility, dig into technical depth, and build the media relationships and narrative frameworks that give Cisco outsized mindshare in categories not yet fully defined. 

Key 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.  

Minimum Qualifications 

• 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 Qualifications 

• 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. 

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. 

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks.  Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 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.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.