Job Description

Splunk, a Cisco company, is building a safer and more resilient digital world with an end-to-end full stack platform made for a hybrid, multi-cloud world. Leading enterprises use our unified security and observability platform to keep their digital systems secure and reliable. Our customers love our technology, but it's our caring employees that make Splunk stand out as an amazing career destination. No matter where in the world or what level of the organization, we approach our work with kindness. So bring your work experience, problem-solving skills and talent, of course, but also bring your joy, your passion and all the things that make you, you. Come help organizations be their best, while you reach new heights with a team that has your back.

Role summary:

We are seeking an extraordinary regional sales leader to join our team as “Area Vice President, Strategic Account”. In addition to requisite passion, skills, and leadership- and sales experience, you will have a consistent track record in building and leading high performing software and SaaS sales teams that has been exceeding incremental revenue (iACV) and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) targets and associated company priorities. Your role will have a material impact on Splunk’s overall performance in the region, are you up for the challenge?

The Area Vice President, Strat holds full executive accountability for accelerating Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) growth across the entire region. This includes driving new business acquisition and incremental revenue through incremental ACV (iACV) while safeguarding and expanding the renewable ACV (rACV) base. The AVP delivers sustainable revenue performance by aligning go-to-market strategy, customer engagement, and operational execution to the region’s growth objectives.

The AVP leads the sales organization allocated to cover the designated account set, and brings deep experience in managing high-performing sales teams, particularly in the enterprise software and SaaS sectors. This role involves direct oversight of first-line and account teams/account managers, effectively operating as a second-line leader responsible for setting strategic direction and ensuring execution across multiple levels of the organization.

Success in this role depends on the AVP’s ability to orchestrate and align an extended leadership team. This includes close collaboration with key cross-functional stakeholders such as:

• Sales Engineering
• Advisory / Value Engineering
• Renewals and Customer Success
• Marketing
• Channel and Partner Management

The AVP ensures that all functions are working in concert to deliver exceptional customer value, accelerate deal velocity, and optimize both customer acquisition and long-term retention. This role requires a strong blend of strategic leadership, operational excellence, and hands-on execution—with a consistent focus on revenue growth, customer success, and market expansion.

What We're Looking For:

• Proven Leadership Track Record: Demonstrated success in hiring, developing, and scaling high-performing, enterprise-grade sales organizations—consistently delivering against ambitious growth targets in dynamic, high-growth environments.
• Adaptability and Scalable Impact: A strategic operator who thrives in fast-evolving markets, with a history of adapting operating models and team structures to match changing customer needs and business priorities.
• Executive Influence and Stakeholder Alignment: Exceptional ability to influence and build trust with senior stakeholders—both within complex customer organizations and across internal cross-functional teams at Splunk.
• Enterprise Orchestration: Skilled in aligning diverse decision-makers around a unified vision, driving consensus, and accelerating enterprise-wide outcomes through strong governance and execution discipline.
• Deep SaaS and Cloud GTM Expertise: A comprehensive understanding of modern SaaS and cloud go-to-market motions, with the ability to integrate Sales, Customer Success, Renewals, Marketing, Partners, and Solutions Engineering into a cohesive customer engagement model.

Responsibilities:

• Develop a team of first line leaders closely with other functional teams.
• Lead by example, set expectations, and follow through effectively.
• Provide coaching and mentorship as needed and ensure that managers do the same for their team.
• Consistently deliver against targets – ensuring company goals, and objectives are achieved consistently and sustainably.
• Accurately forecast monthly, quarterly, and annual targets for assigned region.
• Effectively manage your region by considering each and all accounts collectively; establish accurate plans and forecasts; prioritize efforts; generate short-term results while holding a long-term perspective to achieve overall results.
• Put into place sales force structure, process strategies, and strategic resource plans that will bring together key opportunities in target markets throughout the Region.
• Unearth customer insights, define value proposition, determine appropriate sales and marketing strategy to maximize growth objectives across the region aligned to the strategy of EMEA.
• Provide leadership and oversight to ensure the team demonstrates and deploys resources expertly and for the highest impact.
• Collaborating with sales engineering, channels/alliances, customer success, renewals professional services, product, legal, marketing, and engineering teams to create a flawless customer experience.

Requirements:

• 5+ years' experience building and running enterprise sales teams; second line management experience required.
• Relevant software industry experience in any of the following IT systems, enterprise or infrastructure management, application development and management, security, business applications and/or analytics.
• Subscription, SaaS, or Cloud software experience is mandatory.
• Strong market awareness of the region
• History of consistently meeting/exceeding targets and objectives personally and as a leader.
• Excellent leadership and influencing skills; ability to build strong business partnerships both outside, and within the organization.
• Skilled at business planning and diligent at measuring and communicating progress towards the plan, identifying roadblocks, and coming up with appropriate solutions.
• Highly professional persona and polished demeanor.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills; effective at delivering executive level presentations.
• Bachelor's degree; MBA a plus
• Ability to travel ~20-40%
• Fluent in French & English (both written & spoken) is mandatory

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.