Eric Knipp

Eric Knipp is the Vice President of Systems Engineering for the Americas Theatre. In this role, he leads the largest systems engineering team within Cisco and works closely with Sales leadership to develop Cisco’s technology go-to-market and ensure customer satisfaction. Eric also partners with Cisco’s Engineering and Customer Experience (CX) organizations to bring new solutions and offers to market. Throughout his 19-year tenure with Cisco, Eric has held numerous positions focused on engineering and architectural development. He is passionate about evolving the networking industry and his team through innovation by unlocking the value of programmability and integrating the network into the modern application development and DevOps frameworks. Prior to his current role, Eric served as the Senior Systems Engineering Director for the Americas Service Provider Segment. Before to joining Cisco, Eric held several industry roles with companies such as AT&T and Nortel, where he focused on providing advanced architectural guidance to senior IT leadership in the areas of network architecture, global telephony design, and security. Eric earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Indiana University and holds a Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) certification. He has served as a contributing author to multiple publications focused on network design, security, and unified communications and has been formally recognized as a distinguished speaker at numerous events including Cisco Live. Eric resides in Raleigh, North Carolina and enjoys many activities such as hunting, skiing, weightlifting, biking, and martial arts.