Senior Director, APAC Systems Engineering

Senior Director, APAC Systems Engineering
*Candidates for this role can be located in Australia, Singapore or Japan

Role Overview

The Senior Director, APAC Systems Engineering is a senior executive leader responsible for driving technical strategy, customer outcomes, and regional growth across Asia-Pacific. This role leads a high-performance Systems Engineering organization focused on cloud-managed networking, advanced enterprise architectures, and agentic AI-driven operations.
Operating as a strategic peer and partner to the SVP, APAC Sales, this leader co-owns regional success—aligning technical vision, go-to-market execution, and customer engagement to accelerate revenue growth, increase win rates, and deepen strategic customer relationships.

Regional Leadership & Sales Alignment:
• Lead and scale a geographically distributed APAC Systems Engineering organization
• Define and execute the regional SE strategy in tight alignment with the SVP, APAC Sales and global SE leadership
• Act as a strategic advisor and thought partner to the SVP, APAC Sales on pipeline strategy, account prioritization, and market expansion
• Align technical resources to regional sales motions, strategic accounts, and growth initiatives
• Establish a performance culture focused on customer outcomes, revenue impact, and execution excellence

Cloud, Networking & Agentic AI Leadership:
• Provide regional technical leadership across campus, wireless, data center, WAN, security, and cloud-managed networking architectures
• Champion agentic AI-driven networking, including autonomous monitoring, optimization, remediation, and AI-assisted troubleshooting
• Ensure SE teams can clearly articulate how AI agents and closed-loop systems reduce operational complexity and improve business outcomes
• Position cloud-native and AI-powered platforms as strategic enablers for digital transformation

Customer & Executive Engagement:
• Serve as executive technical sponsor for the region’s most strategic customers and partners
• Jointly engage with the SVP, APAC Sales in executive-level customer discussions, QBRs, and strategic account reviews
• Lead complex architectural and transformation conversations with CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, and Heads of Infrastructure
• Build trusted-advisor relationships that influence long-term customer roadmaps and platform adoption

Technical Excellence & Innovation:
• Ensure consistent, high-quality technical execution across designs, demos, architectures, and POCs
• Establish best practices for cloud-native networking, automation, APIs, and AI-integrated operations
• Provide structured feedback to Product Management and Engineering based on APAC customer and market insights
• Act as a visible regional thought leader on AI-powered, autonomous networking

Cross-Functional Collaboration:
• Align with Global Systems Engineering leadership on strategy, standards, and operating models
• Partner closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Services, and Support to improve customer experience and time-to-value
• Contribute to global AI, platform, and innovation initiatives

Talent Development & Culture:
• Recruit, develop, and retain top cloud, networking, and AI-literate technical talent
• Build leadership bench strength and succession plans across APAC
• Coach senior SE leaders and engineers to operate effectively at both technical and business-outcome levels
• Foster a culture of continuous learning in cloud, automation, and agentic AI

Qualifications:
• 15+ years in enterprise networking, cloud, infrastructure, or platform-based technology
• 7+ years leading senior technical organizations, including managers of managers
• Proven experience leading pre-sales or Systems Engineering teams in the APAC region
• Demonstrated success partnering with senior sales leadership to drive revenue and growth

Technical & Strategic Expertise:
• Deep understanding of enterprise networking (campus, wireless, data center, WAN, security)
• Strong experience with cloud-managed and SaaS-based networking platforms
• Working knowledge of agentic AI concepts, autonomous systems, and closed-loop operations
• Ability to translate technical capability into executive-level business value

Leadership Attributes:
• Strategic, collaborative leader with strong executive presence
• Trusted partner to sales leadership with a shared ownership mindset
• Excellent communicator across technical, business, and cultural boundaries
• Customer-first, outcome-driven, and accountable