Principal Engineer - Silicon One Software

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  • Location:
    Offsite, Boxborough, Massachusetts, US
  • Alternate Location
    San Jose, CA
  • Area of Interest
    Engineer - Hardware
  • Compensation Range
    193100 USD - 323500 USD
  • Job Type
    Professional
  • Technology Interest
    Networking, Software Development
  • Job Id
    1443934

The application window is expected to close on 07/25/2025.

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.


Meet the Team

Cisco Silicon One is the center of Cisco’s ASIC design and is driving the development of next-generation network devices for the 5G and AI era. Our outstanding team works in a startup atmosphere within a stable and leading corporate environment, and our design center hosts all silicon Hardware and Software development fields under one roof.

Our devices are crafted for universal adaptability, delivering high speed without sacrificing programmability, buffering, power efficiency, scale, or feature flexibility. The Cisco Silicon One team develops breakthrough silicon products. Our team develops the full software stack enabling the Silicon One network processors.

We work with the Open Standards community and our incredible customers to deliver best in class routing and switching platforms. Work also with architecture and design teams to define the next generation of ASIC products being developed.

You will work multi-functionally with ASIC teams, customer engineering teams to understand and prioritize features, capabilities.

These platforms play a key role in the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We work with subject-matter experts around the world who share a common mission to deliver extraordinary products and to have fun doing it.

Your Impact

You are a creative and skilled technical professional who excels at solving sophisticated problems. As a passionate innovator and self-starter, you turn strategic visions into reality.

Using your strong communication, empathy, and analytical abilities you collaborate effectively by listening, finding common ground, and working as a team to find the best product solutions. You have a high awareness which will guide you in generating trust with the customer. You are very organized enabling you to scale across multiple customer conversations well. You can piece together fragments of information and discover customer requirements that can guide our products to match these requirements.

  • Close interaction with customers to gather requirements, explain system design, share timelines, address difficulties, questions, issues, help in adoption.
  • Lead technical team to implement features that are aligned to customer expectations now and will address their expectation in the future.
  • Collaborate with multi-functional teams, including Silicon One architects, software engineers and senior partners to ensure the alignment of Silicon One software initiatives and development work with business objectives.
  • Lead the design and architecture of robust software systems, making design choices and deciding coding standards, tools, and platforms.
  • Drive the adoption of standard processes in coding, testing, documentation and maintainability.
  • Provide technical leadership by guiding and mentoring a team of Software Engineers, driving technical excellence in SDK/SAI API development.
  • Design, develop, and maintain APIs that expose Silicon One capabilities to various teams, ensuring scalability, reliability, and ease of use.

Minimum Qualifications

  • Masters degree in science, computer, electrical engineering, or related field; or 14+ years of experience in IT or Software Engineering field.
  • Experience in the computer networking field and writing software in C, C++, and Python in a product area (ASIC). Experience debugging networking software.
  • Prior work experience in L2 and L3 networking, platform solutions, topologies and interaction with higher networking layers.
  • 7+ years of experience leading design and development of software systems.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience serving in the capacity of Principal Software Engineer or Director.
  • Experience in building software stack for ASIC or similar network processors.
  • Experience in network processor Interrupts and Error handling in SDK and Traffic Management is a plus.
  • Ability to constantly identify, follow and learn innovative technologies, work in a fast-paced, team-focused environment.
  • Experience mentoring peers at all levels.
  • Experience with SONiC, SAI or another Network OS.
  • Experience with cloud, data center, or edge networking products.

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. Simply put – we power the future.

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:

When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings.

Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter.  Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. 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 up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

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