Channel Business Development Manager – ISV & Ecosystem Partnerships (AI Solutions)

Meet The Team We are seeking a dynamic and strategic Channel Business Development Manager to drive collaboration with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and ecosystem, focusing on delivering AI-powered solutions to end customers. This role is responsible for identifying, developing, and managing strategic partnerships, accelerating the adoption of AI use cases, enabling scalable, industry-specific solutions through our channel ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner Ecosystem Development: Build and nurture relationships with ISVs, system integrators, technology partners, and other ecosystem players to co-develop, promote, and deliver AI-based solutions.
• AI Use Case Enablement: Collaborate closely with partners to understand customer challenges, define relevant use cases, co-create solution frameworks that solve business problems in targeted industries.
• Go-to-Market Strategy: Define and implement go-to-market plans in collaboration with partners, focusing on jointly positioning AI solutions to address end-customer needs effectively.
• Sales Enablement & Support: Provide technical and business support to channel partners, including sales training, solution demonstrations, proposal assistance, and joint customer engagement activities.
• Opportunity Identification: Identify market opportunities and high-impact use cases where AI solutions can drive customer value, working closely with sales, product, and marketing teams.
• Partnership Performance Management: Track and report on partner performance metrics, business outcomes, pipeline growth, and customer success cases to continually optimize channel strategy.
• Market Insights & Feedback Loop: Collect market intelligence and customer feedback to influence solution development, to better address industry demands.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. MBA or equivalent experience preferred.
• Strong experience in channel management, business development, or partnership management, with a strong focus on technology solutions.
• Understanding of the AI landscape, with prior experience managing ISV and ecosystem partnerships will be an added advantage.
• Strong commercial competence and ability to manage complex partner relationships.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder leadership skills.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with product, sales, marketing, and engineering teams.

Preferred Skills

• Prior experience in a technology vendor, AI platform provider, or system integrator.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
• Familiarity with solution development lifecycle in a partner ecosystem context.

Key Performance Indicators

• Nurture & Sustain key ISV partnerships developed
• Funnel / Pipeline of joint AI solution opportunities
• Partner-driven revenue contribution
• Customer case studies delivered

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.