Engineering Program Manager

Cisco Systems, Inc.; Milpitas (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) matching

Paid parental leave

Paid time off

Volunteer days

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a Technical Program Manager to lead multi-team SaaS and AI-powered initiatives from strategy to production and operation.

You will bring structure to ambiguous programs and align large, cross-functional teams across product, engineering, data, and security. In this role, you will influence roadmaps, manage critical paths, and oversee agentic AI programs from definition through deployment, with emphasis on evaluation-driven delivery, observability, and stakeholder

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of related experience or higher, or equivalent
• Experience leading complex technical programs for enterprise SaaS products
• Experience in generative AI, LLMs, or agentic capabilities through development and production

Responsibilities

• Translate strategy into clear program plans, milestones, and ownership
• Lead large, high-risk programs with cross-functional dependencies
• Coordinate multi-team efforts across product, engineering, data, security, and GTM
• Define validation, observability, and release readiness requirements
• Communicate status and tradeoffs to executives and mentorship to peers

Skills

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Program management

Strategic planning

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

PhD

Tools

APIs

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 08/24/2026

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

You will join a team building complex, cloud-native SaaS and AI-powered products that move from concept through production launch, adoption, and ongoing operation. The team works across product management, engineering, applied AI/ML, data, infrastructure, security, compliance, customer experience, and go-to-market partners to deliver customer-ready capabilities at scale. This is a highly multi-functional environment where transparency, execution, rigor, and strong partnership are critical to success. The work is fast-moving, and focused on delivering enterprise-grade products and AI capabilities that are reliable, secure, and built for real-world adoption.

Your Impact

As a Technical Program Manager, you will lead sophisticated SaaS and AI-powered product initiatives from strategy through production delivery and operation. You will bring structure to ambiguous programs and drive alignment across large, multi-functional teams.

• Turn product and technical strategy into clear plans, milestones, dependencies, success metrics, and ownership across teams.

• Lead large programs with moderate to high risk, multiple interdependencies, and impact across customers, partners, platforms, and releases.

• Lead programs spanning product, engineering, design, data, applied AI/ML, infrastructure, security, compliance, customer experience, and go-to-market teams.

• Influence product and technical roadmaps by managing critical paths, sequencing, architecture dependencies, delivery tradeoffs, risks, resources, and commitments.

• Lead agentic AI programs from definition through production and iteration, coordinating agent workflows, model and tool integration, grounding, evaluations, guardrails, observability, and human oversight.

• Establish evaluation-driven delivery practices so AI quality, safety, latency, cost, and reliability are measured before launch and monitored in production.

• Partner with engineering and quality teams to define validation, release, observability, and operational-readiness requirements for continuous integration and deployment.

• Communicate program status, technical tradeoffs, risks, and decisions to executive audiences with clear recommendations.

• Provide guidance and mentorship to other program managers and team members while driving a strategic horizon of one year or more.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of related experience, Master’s degree with 6+ years of related experience, or PhD with 3+ years of related experience.

• Experience leading complex technical programs for enterprise SaaS products through production launch and ongoing operation.

• Experience directly leading at least one generative AI, LLM-based, or agentic capability through development, production launch, and post-launch iteration.

• Previous experience leading cross-functional technical programs through influence in a highly matrixed organization.

• Experience in cloud platforms, APIs, distributed systems, data systems, and modern AI development and deployment practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading multi-team SaaS or AI programs involving cloud-native architecture, API integrations, data platforms, AI evaluations, security, reliability, and customer-facing production launches.

• Experience with generative AI and agentic systems, including agent orchestration, tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation frameworks, guardrails, observability, and human-in-the-loop workflows.

• Ability to understand system architecture, identify cross-platform dependencies, facilitate engineering tradeoffs, and translate complex technical risks and decisions for executive audiences.

• Experience applying fit-for-purpose development and execution practices, including Agile methodologies, to improve planning, decision-making, delivery, and learning.

• Strong ability to bring structure to ambiguous initiatives, drive timely decisions, and create accountability across product, engineering, security, compliance, customer experience, and go-to-market stakeholders.

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 $171,600.00 to $245,000.00 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.

• 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. 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:

$171,600.00 - $281,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$151,300.00 - $250,900.00

* 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.