Client Director, Cloud & Strategic AI

Who You'll Work With The Client Director owns Arista's relationship with one or more of the world's largest cloud providers and frontier AI labs, end to end: strategy, revenue, and trust. You'll be the single point of accountability for high-impact accounts building some of the largest AI training and inference clusters on the planet, shaping the future of AI infrastructure scale. This role offers high executive visibility, collaborating directly with Arista leadership and sitting on a Bay Area-based team that covers our most strategic hyperscale and AI customers. These customers buy at enormous scale, move fast, run their own engineering-led evaluations, and expect a peer-level technical partnership from a team that understands their architecture as well as they do. What you'll do Own the account strategy • Build and run a multi-year account plan tied to the customer's AI and cloud roadmap: cluster build-outs, front-end and back-end fabrics, DCI, and next-generation silicon transitions. • Know the customer's org chart cold, from network engineering and architecture through supply chain, procurement, finance, and legal. Build relationships at every layer, up to executive sponsors. • Anticipate where the customer is going 12–24 months out and position Arista there before an RFP is written. Win the big decisions • Lead strategic RFPs and competitive evaluations from qualification through award, coordinating SEs, product management, engineering, and executives into one coherent response. • Leverage Arista's open networking advantage to develop sharp competitive positioning against white-box/ODM, merchant-silicon disaggregation, and incumbent vendors. Win by offering unmatched flexibility—whether leading with EOS or supporting the customer's chosen NOS (e.g., SONiC, FBOSS for Meta) on Arista best-in-class hardware. • Structure deals that work for both sides: pricing, multi-year commitments, reseller and channel paths, and creative commercial and financing models. Deliver on commitments • Own the forecast and the quote-to-PO-to-delivery chain. Catch discrepancies before the customer does. • Partner with supply chain and operations to secure capacity and manage lead times on large, time-critical builds. • Handle escalations personally, from field issues to commercial disputes, and close the loop. Be the customer's advocate inside Arista • Translate customer requirements into clear input for product management and engineering roadmaps. • Drive alignment with Arista executives, finance, legal, and supply chain on non-standard terms and strategic commitments. • Share account intelligence and competitive insight across the team so every account benefits. Required: • 12+ years selling data center networking, optical, silicon, or cloud infrastructure, with at least 5 years owning a hyperscale, cloud service provider, or frontier AI account. • A track record of closing large, multi-year deals (eight- and nine-figure programs) and consistently exceeding quota. • Working technical fluency in data center fabrics: leaf-spine and AI back-end networks, BGP/EVPN, 400G/800G Ethernet, RoCE and congestion management, DCI, and optics. You can hold your own with a customer's principal network engineer. • Understanding of the NOS landscape (EOS, SONiC, FBOSS, and other disaggregated options) and how hyperscalers decide between them. • Experience running complex RFPs and competitive evaluations against well-funded incumbents and white-box/ODM alternatives. • Comfort with the commercial side: pricing strategy, reseller and channel structures, non-standard terms, and working through legal, finance, and supply chain. • Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or business, or equivalent experience. Preferred: • Background as