Director - Engineering (AI - Mobile Development)

Cisco; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco seeks a Director of Engineering for AI Mobile, Desktop & Surfaces Development to architect and lead the client surface ecosystem for MyAgent. You will direct a compact pod of 5-8 senior engineers while remaining hands-on in code, architecture, and runtime performance across iOS/Android, macOS/Windows, and embedded environments.

You will own roadmaps, enable rapid iteration, ensure sub-second startup times, and deliver native multimodal AI capabilities with low latency and robust UX across

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field or equivalent practical work experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 4+ years of experience leading or mentoring software teams.
• Experience designing and developing client applications on mobile or desktop platforms.
• Proficiency in one or more client-side languages (Swift, Kotlin, C++, Rust, TypeScript).

Responsibilities

• Write production code and conduct architecture and PR reviews to uphold quality benchmarks across client codebases.
• Lead an elite engineering pod of 5-8 senior engineers with fast iteration and low latency focus.
• Own technical roadmaps, sprint planning, and architectural milestones for mobile, desktop, and embedded client surfaces.
• Architect, build, and ship high-performance native apps across iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows with sub-second startup and smooth UI.

Skills

Leadership

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or related

Master's degree or PhD (preferred)

Tools

Swift

Kotlin

C++

Rust

TypeScript

Job description

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

• 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 fram