Director, Cloud Engineering and Operations

Cisco Systems, Inc; San Jose, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 251,000 - 363,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonuses

401(k) matching

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. seeks a Director of Cloud Operations to lead strategy, engineering, and operational excellence for a global enterprise multi-cloud ecosystem.

You will shape governance, enable developer velocity, and manage FinOps with a product-led approach, ensuring 24/7 resilience and AI-native infrastructure. The role emphasizes executive communication, large-scale transformations, and collaboration across Cisco’s global teams, with onsite hybrid collaboration preferred in San Jose or

Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive cloud engineering experience, including 5+ years in senior leadership.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive cloud strategy, governance, and cost management across AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid environments.

Skills

Cloud leadership

Multi-cloud architecture

FinOps

SRE & Observability

IaC & CI/CD

Tools

Splunk

Datadog

Prometheus/Grafana

Terraform

CI/CD tooling

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 09/17/2026

Meet the Team

Enterprise AI Platforms & Infrastructure (EAIPI) powers Cisco’s digital transformation by owning and operating the full infrastructure stack—including data centers, GPU clusters, storage, orchestration, and full-stack observability—within a complex hybrid-cloud environment. Our mission is to provide robust AI and infrastructure capabilities to Cisco’s global enterprise, product business units, and workforce. We operate as "Customer Zero," partnering with Cisco product organizations to validate new technologies under real-world production conditions, ensuring operational excellence and reliability before external release. There is a strong preference for candidates based in San Jose (SJC) or Milpitas, California or Raleigh-Durham (RTP), North Carolina, to enable onsite collaboration 2-3 days per week.

Your Impact

As the Director of Cloud Operations, you will lead the strategy, engineering, and operational excellence of Cisco’s enterprise multi-cloud ecosystem (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, and others). Positioned at the intersection of infrastructure, security, developer velocity, and financial efficiency, you will influence how thousands of Cisco engineers build and operate cloud workloads. You will define and enforce cloud governance and compliance, drive developer enablement through a product-led approach, manage enterprise FinOps and cloud economics, and lead cloud operations toward autonomous, AI-native infrastructure. Success in this role means maintaining 24/7 operational resilience, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and scaling a diverse, world-class engineering organization.

Minimum Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive cloud engineering experience, including 5+ years in senior leadership managing managers and technical leads in large enterprises.

• 10+ years of expertise in multi-cloud architecture and operations across AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid environments.

• 5+ years of experience scaling FinOps frameworks, governance models, and cost-management tools (e.g., Cloudability or cloud-native tools).

• 5+ years of experience of modern SRE practices, observability platforms (Splunk, Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), and CI/CD automation.

Basic Qualifications

• AWS/GCP Professional Certifications and FinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP).

• Experience with agentic workflows, AIOps, and AI-driven automation in enterprise IT.

• Demonstrated success leading large-scale organizational transformations and complex platform migrations.

• Exceptional communication skills to translate complex technical requirements into executive business strategy.

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 $250,600.00 to $362,600.00 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 ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto 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:

$250,600.00 - $416,900.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$241,400.00 - $371,000.00

* 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.