Lead Incident Manager — Global Escalations & Reliability

Cisco; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco is seeking a Senior Incident Manager for its globally distributed security team based in San Jose. You will drive the response to major incidents and complex customer escalations, coordinating cross-functional groups and delivering timely updates to minimize disruption and restore critical services.

You will lead post-incident reviews, develop and refine playbooks, mentor staff, and partner with Architecture, Product, and Engineering to enhance reliability and resilience across Cisco's

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 10 years of related experience, Master’s degree and 8 years, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Experience in major incident management, technical support, customer escalation management, site reliability, or a related field.
• Experience leading P1/P2 incidents and complex customer issues through resolution or formal handoff.
• Experience coordinating Support, Engineering, Product, Account Teams, and leadership during critical incidents.
• Experience with incident tracking and customer-management tools such as Jira and Salesforce.
• Experience documenting root cause, corrective actions, and follow-up work.

Responsibilities

• Lead P1 and P2 incidents and complex customer escalations from intake through resolution or handoff.
• Coordinate Support, Engineering, Product, Account Teams, and leadership to drive resolution.
• Identify customer and business risk and drive mitigation plans; lead post-incident reviews.
• Develop and improve incident-management playbooks, processes, and governance.
• Lead crisis simulations and tabletop exercises to improve readiness.
• Prepare operational reports, outage summaries, metrics and follow-up plans.
• Use automation and AI-enabled tools to improve incident response.
• Mentor and coach incident managers and engineers.
• Partner with Architecture, Product, and Engineering to improve reliability and observability.
• Support continual improvement across incident-management practices.
• Help define priorities and long-term improvements for incident management.

Skills

Major incident management

Customer escalation management

Site reliability

Incident tracking

Communication under pressure

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Tools

Jira

Salesforce

Job description

Cisco is seeking a Senior Incident Manager for its globally distributed security team based in San Jose. You will drive the response to major incidents and complex customer escalations, coordinating cross-functional groups and delivering timely updates to minimize disruption and restore critical services.

You will lead post-incident reviews, develop and refine playbooks, mentor staff, and partner with Architecture, Product, and Engineering to enhance reliability and resilience across Cisco's