Travelling – Exploring Exotic Cuisines and Cultures
Vishnu Chandra Pandey
Principal Technical Product Specialist
Bengaluru
Summary
Currently working as a Leader – Systems Engineering at Cisco with nearly 14 years of diverse experience spanning Product Management, Customer Success, Technical Support, and Technical Marketing. Adept at driving business growth, technical strategy, and customer engagement across multiple domains.
In the current role, successfully revamped the segment business, over achieving targets consistently for the past five quarters and contributing to growth of the company. Proven expertise in competitive intelligence, having established competitive intelligence practices across multiple organizations.
Previously led and executed complex automation and certificate lifecycle management projects for the top five global financial institutions, ensuring seamless deployment and security compliance. A strategic thinker with a deep understanding of emerging technologies, network automation, and cybersecurity, leveraging innovation to drive business transformation.
Passionate about mentorship and talent development, actively coaching and grooming young professionals at Cisco through dedicated programs. Committed to making a meaningful impact by empowering individuals, fostering collaboration, and shaping the next generation of industry leaders.
Strong leadership, analytical, and communication skills, with a passion for building high-performing teams, optimizing technical solutions, and delivering impactful business outcomes.
Overview
14
14
years of professional experience
6
6
years of post-secondary education
5
5
Certifications
Work History
Leader - Systems Engineering
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Bengaluru
12.2023 - Current
- Lead Team of Solutions Engineers across the region and develop and foster talent and work on challenging deadlines and resource limitations by reallocating personnel and focusing on priority tasks.
- Drive Technical closures of all the deals in the region, help create pipeline and customer mindshare.
- Collaborate with sales and product teams to enhance operational efficiency and drive excellence.
- Develop partner strategy and work with the partners and distributors to make sure we are able to get the messaging going on the ground
- Assist with new hire processing and existing training programs.
- Build high-performing teams by recruiting top talent and providing ongoing support through professional development programs.
- Increase team productivity by streamlining communication and implementing effective project management strategies.
- Devised and implemented processes and procedures to streamline operations.
- Own Trade shows messaging both regional and global events across APJC, EMEA and USA.
- Mentor new Hires and Graduates to help them develop leadership skills and advance their careers within the organization.
- Overcame challenging deadlines and resource limitations by reallocating personnel and focusing on priority tasks.
- Communicate, lead with a growth mindset, and build sales strategy and guiding the engineering team in executing that strategy
- Translating sophisticated technology in an approachable way to audiences with varying levels of technical expertise.
Principal Technical Product Specialist
Zscaler Inc
Bengaluru
05.2022 - 12.2023
- Work closely with customers to accelerate the deployment of Zscaler’s Client Connector application.
- Work closely with field teams to help validate customer-specific deployment scenarios with third-party solutions
- Work closely with engineering to recreate deployment scenarios and provide guidance for emerging features
- Deliver architecture documents and design guides
- Deliver high-quality demos for customers, analysts, and execs
- Deliver high-quality presentations for field enablement
- Actively engage with product and engineering teams to provide feedback on the product evolution and act as a customer advocate
- Actively evaluate, document, and deploy new product capabilities in demo scenarios
- Actively work with Customer success and sales team to engage with customers and prospects to show the value in product during and after the deployments and help with upsell and expansion use cases
- Be a thought leader in zero trust architecture with a strong focus on the endpoint and write customer-facing blogs, technical documentation and host technical hands-on training sessions for customers and internal teams
CI Intelligence Analyst
Trellix ( MacAfee and Fireeye )
Bengaluru
01.2022 - 05.2022
- Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Cloud Security CI questions and inquiries.
- Work on the Cloud Security Portfolio and XDR Portfolio.
- Thought leader helping with roadshows and conferences.
- Create, Maintain and Publish all competitive collateral, Battle Card, Positioning decks, Training, felid enablement documents etc.
- Manage all technical aspects of competitive analysis for a given product line, including purchasing, installing, configuring, and maintaining competitor products and McAfee products.
- Disseminate technical findings while maintaining complete objectivity.
- Evaluate vendors and their corporate positioning.
- Work with marketing to develop sales-focused competitive collateral.
- Synthesize data and identify effects of competitive influences on McAfee products.
- Help with, and participate in, product launches, product demonstrations, partner/customer conferences, and strategic planning sessions.
- Created useful and timely intelligence products to support field operations.
- Screened and interpreted all-source intelligence information.
- Provide Beta support to build confidence across the organization in how we differentiate against the market.
- Support Engineering, UX, Product Management, Product Engineering, Sales.
- Briefed upper-level personnel on emerging threats
- Created useful and timely intelligence products to support field operations
Technical Marketing Senior Engineer
SonicWall Inc.
Bengaluru
07.2019 - 01.2022
- Spearhead 3rd party Integrations with RMM and SIEM platforms
- Write blogs to increase market adoptions and awareness along with Technical Marketing Videos.
- Participate in Trade shows such to demonstrate Product capability such as RSA, Black Hat, etc.
- Established GTM plans with Product Managers to define and validate product solutions.
- Create and maintain Competitive Analysis and Battle cards for Sales adoption.
- Work with Product Management team for External and Internal Beta Launch and provide feedback, demo and Training.
- Work with product management and engineering teams to create product launch material like blogs, demo and launch videos
- Proven track record of developing & delivering formal and informal technical material aimed at educating customers, partners or sales teams.
- Create storyboards and write scripts for technical demonstration videos that show value of product offerings to engineers, managers and executives
- Work with Sales and Product Management teams to develop tools and materials for product portfolio.
- Serve as technical interface for Product Management Organization with Field SE's, sales representatives, business development and channel managers
- Collaborated with Product Development and Management on improvements and to create product technical customer value propositions
Manager - Solution Engineering
AppViewX
Bengaluru
07.2016 - 07.2019
- Drafting proposals for New/Existing opportunities with office of CTO, CISO, CIO and Customer Champion.
- Competitive analysis of other solutions and justify market fit for products.
- Work closely with partners across globe, do workshops train SE on solutions as that aligns with go to market strategy.
- Key Member in pricing discussions, to provide better product fit for smooth Adoption.
- ROI Justification and analysis for solution and how this could benefit teams.
- Work with cross functional teams to drive Time to Market
- Identify Expand opportunities for Upsell and Cross-Sell.
- Submit RFP/RFI for opportunities listed by Customers.
- POC Design and Sign-off from Customers.
- Provide feedback to PM team, competitive analysis, taking information from field and driving Roadmap.
- Liaise with Finance teams to get PO out and Follow up on invoicing.
- Work directly with cross-functional internal and external teams creating and delivering Product Enhancements and Professional Services Engagement.
- Work closely with Product Management and evangelize networking technologies and drive product roadmaps.
- Responsible for making sure that optimal service is provided with monthly calls as well as setting up their account.
- Participate in trade shows Such as AWS re-invent, F5 Agility, RSA etc
Network Specialist
Juniper TAC @ CSS Corp.
Chennai
02.2015 - 06.2016
- Handling client presentations and white papers/KB publications.
- Working in challenging Juniper TAC security environment resolving Security/Network issues.
- Configuring and troubleshooting Juniper Firewalls including UTM features
- Handling & Resolving customer issues with Juniper Firewall products.
- Site to Site and Client to site IPsec VPN configurations and troubleshooting.
- Troubleshooting all management and traffic issues on Juniper firewalls.
- To report bugs and issue to Advanced TAC or Engineering team.
- Take care of case escalation providing l2 Support.
- Installed firewalls and VPNs to increase and manage client network security
- Troubleshot and maintained networking devices and infrastructure across enterprise
- Upgraded and expanded network systems and components
Network Engineer
Cisco TAC @ Aricent Technologies
Gurugram
07.2013 - 02.2015
- Configuring and Troubleshooting VPN and remote access on Cisco Devices
- Helping customers configure GRE, L2TPoverIPSEC, U-Turning and VPN failover on Cisco Devices.
- Handling all issues related to VPN, suggesting customer best way to implement VPN
- Handling priority cases for customer's and involving developers if any weird issue or bug possibility is there.
- Recreating issue locally, if customer cannot change anything in production and checking same behavior is reproducible
- Configuring VPNs as per client's requirements on firewalls and routers.
- To work on Priority 1 cases with network down situation.
Marketing Consultant
White Lotus Industries Ltd
Surat
06.2012 - 06.2013
- Assessment of Marketing Opportunities and Potential Market Risks
- Generating leads for possible sales and follow-up sales activity
- Formal proposal writing and business model design.
- Analyzing business Trend and targeting clients with detailed Analysis
- Coordinating with logistics team with End to End product delivery
- Working with QA to get sign-off and vetting product output from production
Technical Associate
Verizon @ Wipro Ltd
Delhi
05.2011 - 05.2012
- Provide problem analysis and resolve client issues with aid of available help desk tools (e.g. Files and Knowledge base articles.)
- Router configuration (Linksys, Net gear), Modem Support, Technical Troubleshooting, Remote Assistance for all Issues.
- Awarded best intern during on job training
- Part of training team and supporting new recruits.
- Optimized operational process to save time and increase efficiency.
Education
B.Tech - Computer Science With 64%
Rajasthan Technical University
Jaipur, Rajasthan 07.2007 - 04.2011
Class 12th - Science With 67%
Crescent Public School | CBSE Board
Delhi 05.2005 - 05.2006
Class 10th - With 72%
Modern Public School | CBSE Board
Delhi 05.2003 - 05.2004
Skills
Competitive Intelligence & Market Analysis
undefinedAccomplishments
- Setup lab for Internal Beta testing to match timeline of a release to support COVID Challenge issues faced by Product Engineering team
- Blogs got featured in networking community for simplifying endpoint security.
- 100% POC to Closure Ratio for 2 Consecutive Quarter and Awarded Best Solution Engineer for the Year.
- Handled Strategic Accounts for top 5 Financial Institutions ensuring Adoption and Stickiness.
- Designed Enterprise Client On-Boarding Process and managed implementation.
- Defined Repeatable Adoption Plays and trained the team to successfully execute them.
- Numerous achievements improving customer support through rolling out new technology and training programs.
- Got Various Awards and recognition for Bagging Large deals and Closing Cross Sell opportunities.
- Spearheaded the On-boarding Process for Solutions Engineers and Customer Success Managers.
- Got selected as a key member of executive-level escalation team that managed strategies and tactics for de-escalating customer accounts, with additional responsibilities for handling at-risk accounts.
Interests
Cooking
Road Trips with Friends and family
Certification
Cisco Certified Network Associate [CCNA]
Additional Information
Visa - US B1/B2
Date of Birth - 07-10-1988
Marital Status - Married
Timeline
Leader - Systems Engineering
Cisco Systems, Inc.
12.2023 - Current
Principal Technical Product Specialist
Zscaler Inc
05.2022 - 12.2023
CI Intelligence Analyst
Trellix ( MacAfee and Fireeye )
01.2022 - 05.2022
Pragmatic Certified Product Manager- Foundations
02-2021
Technical Marketing Senior Engineer
SonicWall Inc.
07.2019 - 01.2022
Manager - Solution Engineering
AppViewX
07.2016 - 07.2019
Network Specialist
Juniper TAC @ CSS Corp.
02.2015 - 06.2016
Network Engineer
Cisco TAC @ Aricent Technologies
07.2013 - 02.2015
Marketing Consultant
White Lotus Industries Ltd
06.2012 - 06.2013
Technical Associate
Verizon @ Wipro Ltd
05.2011 - 05.2012
B.Tech - Computer Science With 64%
Rajasthan Technical University
07.2007 - 04.2011
Class 12th - Science With 67%
Crescent Public School | CBSE Board
05.2005 - 05.2006
Class 10th - With 72%
Modern Public School | CBSE Board
05.2003 - 05.2004
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