Principal Engineer: AI Trust & Secure-by-Design Architecture

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

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a Principal Engineer leading software security to define and drive security architecture across our software platforms and services. You will bridge high‑level strategy and hands‑on engineering to ensure secure products from cloud to edge.

You will mentor teams, shape secure‑by‑design patterns, implement MCP boundaries, and advance policy‑as‑code, threat modeling, and CI/CD security gates.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.
• 15+ years of experience in software engineering and application security architecture.
• Experience with OWASP Top 10, API Top 10, CWE/SANS 25, or zero‑trust patterns.
• Experience in cloud platforms and secure‑by‑design software.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive security architecture across software platforms and services.
• Lead cross‑functional initiatives and mentor engineering teams.
• Implement secure‑by‑default software patterns and MCP boundaries.
• Develop secure contracts in specs (OpenAPI, gRPC/Protobuf) and gate security tests.
• Lead threat modeling and secure‑by‑design engineering efforts.
• Scale automated security gates in CI/CD and define policy‑as‑code frameworks.

Skills

Security architecture

Software security

Cloud-native security

OWASP Top 10

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

Kubernetes

OAuth2 / OIDC

RBAC / ABAC

Backend languages

Threat modeling

Education

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

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a Principal Engineer leading software security to define and drive security architecture across our software platforms and services. You will bridge high‑level strategy and hands‑on engineering to ensure secure products from cloud to edge.

You will mentor teams, shape secure‑by‑design patterns, implement MCP boundaries, and advance policy‑as‑code, threat modeling, and CI/CD security gates.