End-to-End Network Security QA Engineer (Firewall)

Cisco; Fulton (MD); On-site; USD 138,000 - 198,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco’s Network Security SIT/ST teams ensure quality for Secure Firewall products across on-prem and cloud environments. The Software Quality Engineer will own test areas, validate complex workflows, and design automated tests using Python-based frameworks.

The role requires hands-on testing, network-security expertise, and collaboration across geographically distributed teams. Fulton, MD or Austin, TX candidates welcome to apply.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree + 5 years of experience in software quality engineering, system testing, network engineering, or a related discipline.
• Experience designing test scenarios, selecting appropriate methodologies, and configuring the required test environments.
• Experience using Python or a comparable scripting language for test automation and tooling.
• Experience with Linux or Unix administration and troubleshooting skills.
• Experience leveraging generative AI assistants across the software development lifecycle to accelerate coding, automate testing, and streamline work item management.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute risk-based test plans for Cisco Secure Firewall products and their management, data-plane, platform, and ecosystem integrations.
• Validate end-to-end workflows across firewall management, threat inspection, routing, switching, NAT, VPN, identity, logging, policy deployment, and related security capabilities.
• Test complex deployment topologies, including standalone, high-availability, clustered, multi-instance, virtualized, and cloud-based environments.
• Perform feature integration, system, regression, upgrade, rollback, backward-compatibility, resiliency, recovery, scale, stress, and longevity testing.
• Design, implement, maintain, and troubleshoot automated tests using Python-based frameworks and supporting tools.
• Build, configure, and maintain representative test environments containing network devices, security appliances, traffic generators, virtual machines, and cloud resources.
• Reproduce, isolate, and characterize complex software and system failures using packet captures, logs, traces, core files, system metrics, and diagnostic tools.
• Document defects with clear reproduction procedures, technical evidence, business impact, and severity justification.
• Participate in feature handoffs, technical reviews, test-plan reviews, defect triage, and cross-functional quality reviews.
• Use AI-assisted engineering and testing tools where appropriate to accelerate test design, failure analysis, and automation development while validating outputs and protecting confidential information.

Skills

Python

Linux

Generative AI

REST APIs

Git

CI/CD

Automation

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

pyATS

pytest

Wireshark

tcpdump

Job description

Cisco’s Network Security SIT/ST teams ensure quality for Secure Firewall products across on-prem and cloud environments. The Software Quality Engineer will own test areas, validate complex workflows, and design automated tests using Python-based frameworks.

The role requires hands-on testing, network-security expertise, and collaboration across geographically distributed teams. Fulton, MD or Austin, TX candidates welcome to apply.