Consultant, Sales Enablement & Technology

As the global leader in high-speed connectivity, Ciena is committed to a people-first approach. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a flexible work environment that empowers individual growth, well-being, and belonging. We're a technology company that leads with our humanity-driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

Company Overview

Ciena is a global technology leader on a mission to drive innovation and empower businesses worldwide. We champion collaboration, agility, and customer success. To support our world-class global sales organization, we are transforming our internal technology landscape into a strategic engine of growth.

The Consultant, Sales Enablement & Technology (Product Owner), is dedicated to improving customer engagement and refining the technology experience for Ciena's global sales team.

An ideal candidate brings together robust product management skills and effective strategic influence to drive digital transformation and encourage widespread adoption through strong stakeholder alignment.

You will lead key initiatives and launches from MVP all the way to broad implementation, keeping product-user fit, stakeholder engagement, and significant business value at the forefront-balancing visionary thinking with practical execution and building influence across teams.

You will turn business goals into a structured product backlog and guide your Agile Scrum Team, while using AI to enhance both personal and team productivity, to deliver the most impactful results. This role will convert business needs into products that support sales, create effective narratives to drive adoption, and ensure technology delivers measurable outcomes.

How You Will Contribute

Product Strategy & Stakeholder Alignment

• Roadmap: Partner with Sales, Marketing, PLM and various Operations business stakeholders to define your long-term product roadmap. Ensure your roadmap aligns with Ciena's broader Go-to-Market strategy.
• Stakeholder Communication: Function as the primary liaison between the technical team and business stakeholders. Facilitate workshops with various business functions to drive consensus on complex cross-functional processes. Provide clear and regular progress updates appropriate for your management and wider business leadership.
• The Marketing Mindset: Treat internal launches like external product releases. Develop comprehensive Go-to-Market (GTM) plans for new tools, crafting compelling narratives that explain the "why" behind changes and "sell" the value to end-users. Collaborate with your stakeholders to refine the messaging and with your Sales Enablement colleagues on the change management and launch strategies.

Sales Technology Development

• Product Ownership: Manage the lifecycle of your sales technology features. Treat the internal tech stack (including CRM, Enablement, and Intelligence tools/platforms) as a suite of products, ensuring every feature delivers measurable value to the sales field.
• Backlog & Prioritization: Own the product backlog for your scrum team. Objectively prioritize features and enhancements by weighing global stakeholder demands against technical capacity and business impact.
• Agile Leadership: Serve as a Product Owner in our Agile framework. Support your Agile Scrum Team's daily standups, lead design and story grooming sessions and sprint retrospectives to ensure the development team has a steady stream of well-defined and ready work.
• Vendor Relationship Management: Establish clear expectations (deliverables, SLAs, timelines, and governance), build trusted partnerships through consistent, transparent stakeholder communication, and drive continuous improvement by optimizing vendor value, quality, reliability, and long-term business outcomes.

Development Execution Excellence: Stories, Requirements & UAT

• Business Story Writing: Translate complex business needs into clear, value-based epics and user stories by bringing the business need and outcomes to your business analyst, technical architect(s) and/or developers so they can add technical refinement. Write requirements that provide context and mission for developers, ensuring they understand the user's perspective with clearly defined acceptance criteria to improve quality.
• UAT Planning & Leadership: Design and execute User Acceptance Testing (UAT) cycles that mirror real-world sales user scenarios. Recruit and manage a network of stakeholders and "Sales Champions" to validate features and advocate with their peers.
• Process Documentation: Own the documentation and mapping of sales process changes to ensure up-to-date clarity and consistency across the organization.

AI Innovation & Workflow Acceleration

• AI for Productivity: Champion the use of Generative AI tools to accelerate the product lifecycle. Use AI to accelerate the drafting of user stories, summarize stakeholder feedback, and build roadmap and progress awareness.
• Rapid Prototyping: Leverage AI and visual tools to create low-fidelity mock-ups and wireframes during stakeholder meetings, allowing for real-time validation of requirements and faster consensus.
• Futureproofing: Continuously research emerging trends in AI capabilities and how they can be used to keep your team and the global sales organization at the forefront of sales innovation.

Must Haves:

Professional Experience:

Product Development Leadership: A history of "Strategic Execution" -taking complex initiatives from ideation to launch with measurable business impact.

Product/Agile Experience: 5+ years of experience in Sales Operations, Systems Management, and/or Product Management. At least 2 years working as a Product Owner or similar role within an Agile/Scrum environment.

Tech Stack Proficiency: Deep experience managing products and features within a modern sales stack.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: Proficient knowledge (Admin certification preferred) is essential.

Enablement & Content: Proven experience with platforms like Highspot (or similar tools like Seismic/Showpad), understanding how to integrate content strategies into the sales workflow.

Broad Ecosystem: Familiarity with other sales tools (e.g., Sales Engagement, CI, Forecasting) is highly valued.

Core Competencies:

Strategic Communication: You have a marketing/sales mindset. You can tailor your communication style to influence diverse audiences, from developers to C-Level executives.

Business Story Writing: Exceptional written communication skills. You can distill complex process requirements into simple, narrative-driven user stories.

AI Proficiency: Firsthand experience using AI tools for daily productivity (prototyping, drafting, summarizing). You embrace technology to move faster.

UAT Planning: Proven ability to design rigorous yet user-friendly UAT plans that catch defects before production while engaging the business.

Soft Skills:

Strategic Autonomy: You take the initiative and can work independently while still understanding where you need stakeholder alignment.

Empathy: You continually expose yourself to better understand the life of a salesperson. You design solutions that minimize administrative burden and maximize selling time.

Desirable Skills

• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or PMI-ACP.
• Experience with Salesforce and Highspot
• Background in Product Marketing or Content Strategy
• Experience working in or with sales teams

Education

• Bachelor's or Masters degree in business, technology, or a related field.

The annual pay range for this position is $120,900 - $193,100 USD

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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 anEqual 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.