Senior Consultant, Strategic Accounts

Ciena is committed to our people-first philosophy. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a personalized and flexible work environment that empowers an individual’s passions, growth, wellbeing and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

Why Ciena:

Achieve your ideal career at the forefront of innovation with Ciena. We know the importance of life outside of work, which is why our employees enjoy flexible paid time off and the freedom of working remotely. Ciena empowers our teams with competitive salaries and incentives, community volunteer programs, professional development resources, and support for our mental and physical health—all experienced within a diverse and inclusive culture. To put it simply, we’re a technology company driven by our humanity.

How You Will Contribute:

As an experienced business development professional with a strong track record of leading and closing complex sales and profitably managing existing high value contracts, you’ll thrive at Ciena in an environment where you’ll lead cross-functional and virtual teams to best leverage new Ciena products and services to address Google’s business challenges.  This is a high impact & strategic role that will be highly visible and drive growth inside the Google account team as well as delivering significant ongoing revenue to Ciena.

You will work closely with the Google Account leader playing a key leadership and collaboration role spanning numerous teams ranging from Ciena Executive team, Sales organization, Operations, R&D and PLM with a focus on maintaining existing and developing new relationships for further implementing our comprehensive business strategies and opportunities within Google.  

What Does Ciena Expect of You?

• Sales expertise - the ability to leverage existing customer knowledge (decision making and services management) and relationships to close the deal.
• Innovation – capable of taking ideas through from conception through to implementation.
• Agility – readily able to manage competing and ever-changing account priorities.
• Leadership by example – sets the bar high, takes initiative and holds self and others accountable to deliver.
• A sense of urgency – what’s important to the customer is equally important to you.
• Collaborator – leverages relationships to understand current business, available and future products, Ciena’s investment strategies and competitive differentiators.
• Communication expertise – the ability to tailor a message/articulate a value proposition to an audience to enable engagement at all levels of an organization.
• A commitment to learning – you keep abreast of the market and competition and use that information to Ciena’s advantage.

Position Responsibilities:

Position requires an individual with strong technical, commercial capabilities, account strategy abilities, large system sales background, and a proven track record in winning deals within complex organizations. Individual must be highly motivated, have strong interpersonal skills. Person must be a strong team player able to influence supporters across multiple organizations.

• Your laser focus on execution and sales strategy, combined with your ability to maintain and expand opportunities in existing and new pipelines, will enable CIENA to maximize its revenue streams and margins in accordance with company expectations.
• You will initiate and develop strong customer relationships at all levels to include executives and hold responsibility for direct sales activities requiring bookings/revenue/margin presentations at all levels of management.
• You will play a key role in building & implementing strategic account plans and tactics for each specific sales objective, prioritizing sales opportunities and retaining overall responsibility for the sales and fulfilment process associated with the global activities.
• You will be accountable for managing and reporting the business through such tools as Salesforce.com, meetings with leadership and cross-functional support teams along with weekly status/progress reports.
• Work collaboratively within the sales & engineering teams as well as cross-functional teams to build winning sales, product, engineering and marketing strategies
• Maintain industry knowledge of the competitive landscape

• Continue to drive new long-term growth opportunities with Ciena’s Routing & Switching solutions within Google’s Core and Edge networks
• Grow Ciena’s product portfolio within Google Fiber’s network to include Routing & Switching and PON solutions along with expanding existing products
• Identify and pursue new addressable opportunities with Alphabet’s subsidiaries

The Must Haves:

• Self-motivated, with exceptional discipline to work independently to assure success and capable of "owning" assigned areas of responsibility and involving senior management for necessary escalations. 
• Promote a positive (and enjoyable) work environment for colleagues and customers
• Excellent presentation skills. Highly effective communication skills (verbal and written) when interacting with both technical and non-technical customers.
• Ability to ‘read’ the audience leveraging both verbal and non-verbal cues.
• Strong business and technical acumen in the Optical and IP domain.  Strong problem solving and organization skills.  Creative and innovative approach to complex solution sales and deal structures.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain executive relationships (internally and with customers).
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent years of experience.  Greater than 10+ years of solution sales customer-facing experience, preferably within the networking industry with recent Routing/Switching, Pluggable, and Optical networking sales experience
• Proven success and strong track record with winning Routing/Switching/Pluggable/Optical networking solution sales across multiple customers.
• Experience with Regional/Major/Global accounts preferably with the Hyperscalers along with understanding the business drivers, objectives, and strategies with this market
• Knowledge of SDN, NFV, Intra Data Center/Data Center Interconnect, Wireless Networking and other emerging technologies.
• Detailed understanding of Ciena products and future portfolio.
• Willingness to travel frequently.
• Remote position will be located in California preferably within commuting distance of the Google Mountain View Office.

The annual pay range for this position in California is $287,600 - $475,100. This includes both base and incentive compensation.

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At Ciena, we are committed to building and fostering an environment in which our employees feel respected, valued, and heard.  Ciena values the diversity of its workforce and respects its employees as individuals. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.

Ciena is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status.

If contacted in relation to a job opportunity, please advise Ciena of any accommodation measures you may require.