Leader, Software Engineering

The application window is expected to close on: 11/11/2026Meet The Team Cloud Security Engineering at Cisco drives the technology that's transforming the way customers secure their networks, and more importantly, their users. We're seeking a Senior Manager for our Software Engineering teams focusing on Software as a Service (SaaS) products. The individual will lead our dedicated engineers in designing, developing, testing, and deploying robust cloud-based software solutions. A successful candidate should have strong leadership skills, an extensive background in software engineering, a strategic attitude, and experience in people management.

Your Impact As an Engineering Leader within the Control Plane organization, you will be a part of a team to help design, development, and operation of key microservices focused on cloud network experience, traffic optimization and insights related that our Umbrella and Cisco Secure Access products offer. This is a small team that does big things.

Responsibilites include:

• Lead fast-paced teams of cisco cloud security to effectively Design, develop and deliver production quality applications that are highly scalable, supportable and maintainable.

• Partner with internal and external teams, understand business and technical requirements, plan and deliver

• Develop excellent working relationships

• Align to and influence Company and Org Goals, understanding the inter-company dependencies and develop action plans to address problems

• Customer Advocate and designated POCs for select customer

• Understand and drive the team to solve complex network level technical problems.

• Set clear expectations and goals for individuals and team. Drive team with using objectives and key results with measurable metrics.

• Recognize people and team for outstanding impact.

• Provide strong technical vision for your team and ensure consistent delivery on objectives

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in engineering or computer science, with at least 8+ years of overall experience, including 2+ years in people management, having managed multiple teams.

• Experience with container orchestration (AWS ECS/EKS), event-driven architectures (Kafka), and high-throughput data stores (MySQL/Redis).

• Experience in multiple programming languages such as Python and/or Go with practical experience in cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP (AWS preferred).

• Experience with modern software development practices, including CI/CD and DevOps, with experience building agentic systems and employing AI to improve productivity across the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with security platforms, zero trust, SSE/SASE, ZTNA, SWG, CASB, DLP, FWaaS, DNS security, browser isolation, or digital experience monitoring.

• Proven experience designing and managing API Gateways to support diverse client interactions in a secure, scalable SaaS environment.

• Deep working knowledge of observability stacks (e.g., Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus) and SRE practices.

• Experience operating services with high availability requirements (99.99%+) at scale.

• Experience operating in regulated environments with knowledge of security compliance frameworks (SOC2/GDPR/FedRAMP).

• Demonstrated success in performance-tuning database queries, managing stateful services in containerized environments, and ensuring cache efficiency in high-traffic applications.

• Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills; able to collaborate effectively with multi-functional teams in a fast-paced environment.

• Demonstrates a strong sense of ownership, initiative, and commitment to developing talent and supporting team growth.

Why Cisco? At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range posted for this position is $186,900.00 to $267,700.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area: $186,900.00 - $307,800.00 Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $166,300.00 - $274,100.00

• For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined. ** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.