Principal Designer, Networking

Cisco Systems, Inc; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 234,000 - 330,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a Principal Product Designer to shape cross-product journeys within Cisco Networking UX.

You will collaborate with Networking teams, Product, Engineering, Research, and Data to identify high-value customer jobs and translate insights into cohesive experiences. You will design and prototype critical interaction, visual design, information architecture, and data visualization with strong design judgment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in design, HCI, or related field.
• Portfolio demonstrating interaction design, visual design, information architecture, and prototyping, including projects from concept through launch.

Responsibilities

• Design and prototype critical parts of complex end-to-end experiences.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across Cisco Networking UX to ensure coherent journeys.
• Translate customer and market insights into tangible design directions and prototypes.

Skills

Senior design leadership

Turn customer signals into product opp

Portfolio demonstrating design

Cross-team leadership

AI in design

Education

Bachelor's degree

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

AI tools

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 01/29/2027

Hybrid – San Francisco or San Jose, CA. Remote within the U.S. will be considered for candidates outside the Bay Area.

Must include a link to your online portfolio. Only those applications that include portfolios will be considered.

Meet The Team

Cisco Networking is an industry leader providing intelligent network solutions for organizations to securely connect users, devices, applications, and workloads everywhere. We empower organizations – from local libraries to global hotels, hospitals, manufacturers, and more – to focus on their mission and have technology that simply works.

Cisco Networking UX shapes end-to-end experiences across Cisco’s networking portfolio. We consider the full customer journey across products, personas, workflows, and ecosystems, helping customers connect, manage, and understand the networks their organizations depend on.

Our designers partner with teams across Cisco Networking, including Network Platform Experiences and Network Products, as well as colleagues across Cisco. Together with Product, Engineering, Research, Data, and AI teams, we create shared patterns for recommendations, automation, agentic workflows, predictive insights, and data-rich experiences. We make advanced capabilities useful, trustworthy, and intuitive for customers.

Across Cisco Networking UX, we share work early, give and receive feedback, and learn from one another. We invest in craft and growth because strong customer experiences come from strong, collaborative teams.

Your Impact

This Principal Product Designer shapes complex, cross-product journeys that help customers keep networks running, resolve problems faster, and deliver the connectivity their organizations depend on. As a principal individual contributor, you will partner with Networking teams, using customer and market insight to identify high-value customer jobs that cross products and shape coherent experience direction. You will make that direction tangible through narratives and prototypes, help teams translate it into experiences they can deliver, and build alignment through design judgment and influence.

You will collaborate closely with Cisco Cloud Control and teams across Cisco to ensure critical Networking customer journeys are thoughtfully designed and delivered through shared Cisco experiences. You will bring Networking's customer context and technical depth into those decisions so these journeys feel coherent rather than added on.

You will personally design and prototype critical parts of the experience, moving fluidly from portfolio-level direction to detailed interaction, visual design, information architecture, and data visualization. You will carry work through validation, production partnership, delivery, and iteration so the resulting experiences are clear, intentional, and visually refined without sacrificing the depth, intelligence, or control customers need.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelors + 15 years of related experience, or Masters + 12 years of related experience, or PhD + 8 years of related experience, or equivalent related work experience
• Experience turning customer and market signals into product opportunities.
• Portfolio demonstrating interaction design, visual design, information architecture, and prototyping, including at least one project you personally designed and carried from concept through launch. Clearly distinguish your contribution from work you directed, reviewed, or influenced.
• Experience leading complex product design work across multiple teams, subject areas, or products from discovery through delivery and iteration.
• Experience using AI to synthesize research, explore and prototype ideas, and validate design direction, with sound judgment about where intelligent and agentic experiences improve customer outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience bringing a clear point of view and using workshops and design exploration to align partners, shape product direction and business outcomes, and move work forward without a fully defined brief.
• Experience influencing senior partners by making clear recommendations, explaining trade-offs, and helping teams reach sound decisions.
• Experience raising design quality and capability through critique, mentorship, reusable practices, or design standards that others adopt.
• Experience applying the clarity and polish of excellent consumer products to technically complex workflows, using visual richness and insight without hiding deeper detail. Relevant experience may come from consumer-facing products, SaaS platforms, or other products built around complex workflows or data; direct networking experience is not required.
• Experience shaping coherent experiences across products with different customer needs, levels of maturity, or deployment models, including cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments.

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 $233,900.00 to $330,400.00 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.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 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

$233,900.00 - $380,000.00

Non-Metro New York State & Washington State

$220,900.00 - $344,300.00

• 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.