Director - Engineering (AI - Mobile Development)

020 Cisco Systems, Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 251,000 - 363,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking an exceptional, hands‑on Director of Engineering for AI Mobile, Desktop & Surfaces Development to architect, build, and lead the client surface ecosystem for MyAgent across iOS/Android, macOS/Windows, and embedded environments.

You will manage a compact pod of 5–8 senior engineers, own technical roadmaps, drive end‑to‑end delivery with sub‑second startup times and real‑time streaming, and ensure zero‑trust security and high‑quality production code.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical work experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building and shipping software products.
• 4+ years of experience leading, managing, or mentoring software engineering teams.
• Experience designing and developing client applications across mobile or desktop platforms.
• Experience programming in client-side languages (e.g., Swift, Kotlin, C++, Rust, TypeScript).

Responsibilities

• Direct the activities of a software systems development function, software applications development function, and a software quality assurance function for software enhancements and new products.
• Lead a compact, elite engineering pod of 5–8 senior builders while remaining hands-on in code delivery, system architecture, and runtime performance.
• Own the primary interaction surfaces across mobile, desktop, and embedded environments with a modular architecture.
• Define and implement robust client‑side event buses, state synchronization, and offline resilience.
• Set technical roadmaps, sprint plans, and continuous release cadences across platforms.

Skills

Software engineering

Leadership

Client apps

Mobile/desktop

Programming languages

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/Software Eng or equivalent

Master's or PhD preferred

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 10/17/2026.

Meet the Team Cisco’s AI Platform organization is building MyAgent—Cisco's enterprise AI platform powering intelligent, autonomous, and contextual assistance across the enterprise. We enable the engineering organization to improve and optimize engineering processes and infrastructure, delivering an exceptional developer and user experience for building next‑generation products.

In this role, you will direct the activities of a software systems development function, software applications development function, and a software quality assurance function for software enhancements and new products, including cloud‑based and internet‑related tools.

We are seeking an exceptional, hands‑on, high‑velocity Director of Engineering for AI Mobile, Desktop & Surfaces Development to architect, build, and lead the client surface ecosystem for MyAgent.

You will lead a compact, elite engineering pod of 5–8 senior builders while remaining deeply hands‑on in code delivery, system architecture, and runtime performance.

You will own the primary interaction surfaces across mobile (iOS/Android), desktop (macOS/Windows), and embedded environments, delivering an extensible, modular architecture that allows engineers across Cisco to build, extend, and control their own domain experiences with native multimodal AI capabilities.

Your Impact

As the Director of Engineering, you will lead from the front, setting the technical direction and performing the end‑to‑end delivery of client applications and multimodal surfaces across all platforms. Write production code, conduct rigorous architecture and PR reviews, and set uncompromising quality benchmarks across all client codebases. Build, mentor, and direct an elite, high‑slope engineering pod (5–8 senior engineers) focused on rapid iteration, low latency, and robust client software engineering. Own technical roadmaps, sprint planning, architectural achievements, and continuous release cadences across mobile, desktop, and embedded client surfaces. Lead technical feasibility spikes and rapid prototypes for emerging AI interaction paradigms, local inference runtimes, and native device hardware hooks. Architect, build, and ship high‑performance native client applications across iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows with sub‑second startup times and fluid animations. Build low‑latency streaming conversational interfaces supporting real‑time token streaming, rich markdown rendering, dynamic tables, and interactive UI widgets. Integrate native multimodal AI capabilities directly into client runtimes, including real‑time bidirectional streaming audio/voice, computer vision, screenshot/screen‑context capture, and accessibility hooks. Optimize client‑side media pipelines (audio capture, frame buffer sampling, video streaming) for minimal battery consumption, memory overhead, and network bandwidth. Architect a modular presentation framework that empowers distributed engineering teams across Cisco to build, test, and control their own domain‑specific UI cards and workflows without modifying core client binaries. Define and implement robust client‑side event buses, state synchronization pipelines, local‑first disk caching, background execution, and offline resilience. Establish unified component mapping between native client surfaces, web runtimes, and backend agent orchestration layers. Profile memory footprints, eliminate UI thread blocking, optimize cold‑start times, and guarantee smooth 60/120 FPS rendering across varied hardware profiles. Enforce zero‑trust enterprise security standards, automated PKCE authentication, dynamic workload identity bootstrapping (RFC 8693 token exchange), and secure on‑device credential storage (Keychain, Keystore, DPAPI). Instrument rich client telemetry, crash analytics, real‑time performance monitoring, and session tracing integrated into enterprise observability platforms.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field or equivalent practical work experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building and shipping software products.
• 4+ years of experience leading, managing, or mentoring software engineering teams.
• Experience designing and developing client applications across mobile (iOS or Android) or desktop (macOS or Windows) platforms.
• Experience programming in one or more client‑side languages (e.g., Swift, Kotlin, C++, Rust, TypeScript, or equivalent).

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Human‑Computer Interaction (HCI), or a related technical field.
• Experience managing compact, high‑velocity engineering pods (5–8 senior builders) while actively writing production code and reviewing PRs.
• Demonstrated experience building and shipping native client applications from the ground up across iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows using modern frameworks (SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, C++, Rust).
• Experience architecting client interfaces for generative AI, streaming chat completions, token‑by‑token streaming, markdown rendering, tool execution feedback, or multimodal interactions.
• Experience integrating bidirectional streaming audio/voice, computer vision, screen‑context capture, or client‑side media pipelines (WebRTC, CoreAudio, MediaCodec, Opus).
• Experience designing decoupled, pluggable UI component architectures supporting multi‑tenant or multi‑team contribution models.
• Experience with real‑time streaming protocols (WebSockets, gRPC, Server‑Sent Events / SSE), complex state machines, local‑first disk caching, and offline synchronization.
• Experience using on‑device hardware acceleration for local model inference (Apple Neural Engine, CoreML, ONNX Runtime, DirectML).
• Experience profiling memory, optimizing cold‑start times, achieving 60/120 FPS rendering, and implementing zero‑trust authentication (PKCE, OAuth token exchange, Keychain/Keystore/DPAPI).
• Contributions to open‑source client frameworks, developer tools, or UI component libraries.

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.
• 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.
• 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.

Cisconians power the future. We make impact as a team, innovating fast and fearlessly to create meaningful solutions on a large scale. The depth and breadth of our technology doesn't just benefit our customers – it also means limitless opportunities for us to experiment and learn. We understand the power each of our unique backgrounds bring when we work together. Because of that, we have a global network of thinkers, doers, experts, and curious creators who help one another do their life’s best work.