Principal Software Engineer, Security Innovation
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Location:Offsite, Dallas, Texas, US
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Alternate LocationREMOTE
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Area of InterestEngineer - Software
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Compensation Range219500 USD - 297000 USD
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Job TypeProfessional
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Technology InterestSecurity
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Job Id1450510
The application window is expected to close on October 14th, 2025. Note: Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Meet the Team
The Infrastructure and Security CTO team has an incubation team working on a platform centric approach to the next generation data center. Specifically, we are creating winning solutions for workload orchestration that focus on ease of use and integrating identity, security, networking, and management services from Cisco’s entire portfolio.
Your Impact
As a director-level leader and individual contributor, you will be an integral part of the incubation team, joining us at an early stage of the journey and responsible for leading the ideation, design, development and testing phases of new products. As an authority in this domain, you have strong technology experience, an eye for business and a good level of visibility and recognition in the industry (including for example patents, publication/blogs, open-source contributions, conference speaker, academic collaboration, active role in industry consortium…). You thrive in multifaceted environments and can be counted on when the going gets tough. You are also an outstanding communicator who can pitch solutions for complex problems in a simple and articulate way, and adjust communication style to the audience (Customers, Exec, Business, Technical, UX …).
As a Principal Engineer for Cisco, you will have a passion for platform engineering with a focus on making things easier for the customer. Your contributions are high quality and outcome focused. You have a love and passion for making an impact in the industry with innovative products. You know and use containers and virtual machines, and you have your list of things you wish was better about them. You are not afraid to reimagine entrenched systems and products and explore how we should disrupt them. You care about security and ease of use, and you recognize doing both well is hard. You are comfortable working with ambiguity and help the team find a path to adding value for our customers. You have a passion for being part of the leadership for a team and mentoring others. In this role, you will:
- Design and develop a data processing system that collects and consumes the configuration and operational data from infrastructure systems (hyperscalers, VMware, OpenShift, etc) and synthesizes the data to show the relationship between workloads, networks, network functions, security, identity, IPAM, and other workloads.
- Collaborate with the team to design and develop a workload platform leveraging Kubernetes, Cilium and KubeVirt with a focus on ease of use.
- Collaborate with the Isovalent team on making our platform’s networking seamlessly co-exist with the customer’s existing network topology.
- Collaborate with AI team to leverage agentic AI for running playbook/automation for migration of workloads and integrations from existing workload platforms to our platform.
- Mentor engineers and lead by example with great code, code reviews, designs and communication.
Minimum Qualifications
- 15+ years of experience as a software developer to include 5+ years as an operator of large-scale systems that included developing and deploying tooling for those operations.
- Demonstrated experience with at least one hyperscaler (AWS, GCP, Azure) and one on premises virtual infrastructure provider (VMware, OpenStack, OpenShift, Nutanix, KVM/Other).
- Demonstrated ability to deliver outcomes that involved building and/or optimizing large scale complex system(s).
- Demonstrated experience with Kubernetes operations.
Preferred Qualifications
- Ability to constantly identify, follow and learn innovative technologies, work in a fast-paced, team-focused environment.
- Excellent leadership and communication skills.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to take on complex issues.
- Experience developing CRD/Operators for Kubernetes
- Works well on a distributed team.
- Helps others when they need it; and asks for help when you need it.
- Strong communicator.
- Proven record and strong skills in platform engineering and building teams that build and operate platforms.
- Timely delivery on your commitments to the team.
- High quality artifacts like code, code reviews, designs, and feedback to teammates and leaders.
- Having fun while delivering value to our customers.
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.
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.