Principal AI Trust Architect & Secure Software Leader

Cisco; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 234,000 - 330,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco seeks a Principal Engineer to lead software security architecture across platforms and services. You will bridge strategy and execution, ensuring secure-by-default software and MCP boundaries. You will mentor teams, engage with customers, and advance threat prevention for AI-enabled applications.

You'll drive DevSecOps, architectural threat modeling, and governance, shaping secure software supply chains and zero-trust design across Cisco's cloud-native stack.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 15+ years of experience in software engineering and application security architecture.
• Experience with OWASP Top 10, OWASP API Top 10, CWE/SANS 25, or zero-trust patterns.
• Experience in identity and access governance (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, mTLS, SPIFFE/SPIRE).
• One backend language such as Python, Go, TypeScript/Node.js, Rust, or Java.

Responsibilities

• Design trust boundaries, sandboxing models and guardrails for autonomous agents and LLM tool-calling workflows.
• Architect authentication, authorization, and least-privilege scoping for MCP servers and tool registries.
• Mitigate AI threats including prompt injection, data leakage, and tool hijacking in secure-by-design patterns.
• Lead threat modeling for multi-tenant architectures and create hardened design patterns and cryptographic utilities.
• Define policy-as-code and scale automated security gates in CI/CD pipelines (SAST, DAST, IAST, SBOM tracking).

Skills

15+ years software engineering & s

Security architecture leadership

OAuth/OIDC/SAML/mTLS/SPIFFE

Backend languages: Python/Go/TypeSsr/…

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field

Job description

Cisco seeks a Principal Engineer to lead software security architecture across platforms and services. You will bridge strategy and execution, ensuring secure-by-default software and MCP boundaries. You will mentor teams, engage with customers, and advance threat prevention for AI-enabled applications.

You'll drive DevSecOps, architectural threat modeling, and governance, shaping secure software supply chains and zero-trust design across Cisco's cloud-native stack.