Principal Hardware Architect - ASIC & System Integration, Cisco Silicon One (Hybrid)

Cisco; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Silicon One is seeking a Principal Hardware Engineer in San Jose to guide architectural strategy across teams and customer accounts, from concept to field deployment.

You will lead efforts in signal and power integrity, thermal design, and cross-functional reviews, while engaging with customers and standards bodies to drive future product architectures. This role requires strong communication, leadership, and the ability to align stakeholder goals with strategic programs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with 15+ years of relevant signal and power integrity experience.

Responsibilities

• Engage with current and potential customers.
• Incorporate customer feedback into future products.
• Collaborate with product marketing on architectures.
• Participate in standards committees.
• Work with hardware, software and test engineering to deliver quality products to the field.
• Coordinate with external vendors to ensure delivery of future products.
• Support customer demonstrations at internal labs, demo labs, and/or trade shows and conferences.
• Author/co-author white papers and user tutorials for the Marketplace.
• Collaborate with Field Solutions and CSE teams to leverage expertise.
• Provide technical TOI and NPI training in customer-oriented events.

Skills

System architecture

Hardware design

Power integrity

Thermal design

Signal integrity

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Customer engagement

Documentation & writing

Project management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering

Master's degree in Electrical Engineering

PhD in Electrical Engineering

Tools

Verilog

VHDL

FPGA design tools

ECAD tools

Modeling tools

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 11/26/2026 This role involves a hybrid work model, with a flexible in-office schedule that requires commuting to the San Jose, CA office.

Meet the Team

Cisco Silicon One (#CiscoSiliconOne) is a business organization with a long track record of building complex and high-performance Silicon ASICs. Our silicon devices drive the world's most complex networks and carry over 90% of IP traffic. Cisco Silicon One is the only unifying silicon architecture in the market that enables customers to deploy the best-of-breed silicon from Top of Rack (TOR) switches all the way through web scale data centers and across service provider, enterprise networks, and data centers with a fully unified routing and switching portfolio.

Your Impact

We are seeking a Principal Hardware Engineer to serve as a key technical authority within our networking organization. This role transcends individual product lines, positioning you to drive architectural strategy across internal cross-functional groups and our most strategic customer accounts. You will act as the vital link between cutting-edge innovation and real-world market success, shaping the future of our product portfolio from initial concept to field deployment.

The target technology area goes beyond a single product or product line, and will require working with multiple groups inside Cisco, and customers. This position requires high skill levels in architecture, implementation, design, evangelize, marketing support, and account team engagement.

• Actively participate in engagements with current and potential customers.
• Ensure feedback from customers is incorporated into future products, working with product management and engineering.
• Work with product marketing on future product architectures.
• Actively participates in standards committees to influence industry practices.
• Work with hardware, software and test engineering to deliver quality products to the field.
• Work with external vendors to ensure they can deliver products which meet our needs for future products.
• Support customer demonstrations at internal labs, demo labs, and/or trade shows and conferences.
• Author/co-author white papers and user tutorials for the Marketplace.
• Collaborate with Field Solutions and CSE teams to leverage expertise and scaling potential.
• Provide technical TOI and NPI training in various customer-oriented events.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and 15+ years of relevant signal and power integrity experience, or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and 12+ years of relevant signal and power integrity experience, or PhD in Electrical Engineering and 8+ years of relevant signal and power integrity experience.
• At least 5 years’ experience driving System Architecture of hardware systems, including tradeoffs between signal integrity, power integrity, thermal design, total power consumption, cost and schedule.
• At least 5 years experience driving cross-functional buy-in and approval of complex strategic programs with interior executive management (concept commit, architectural commit, execution commit)
• At least 5 years experience generating, driving cross-functional review of and presenting customer-facing materials for strategic projects.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrates impactful proficiency in system architecture, hardware, and software design, including FPGA and ASIC design and verification, system bring-up and debug, and thermal design.
• Exhibits effective skills in articulating complex ideas and technical concepts clearly and effectively to diverse audiences, both verbally and in writing.
• Possesses successful documentation and organizational capabilities, adept at defining workflows that clarify priorities, setting meeting agendas, recording, and distributing notes, and driving tradeoffs to resolution with key stakeholders.
• Demonstrates leadership excellence with experience building and nurturing technical relationships across customer architects, software teams, and Cisco cloud, data center, and network product teams and partners.
• Excels in communication, with experience developing presentations, whitepapers, and architectural documents in collaboration with platform engineering.
• Skilled in customer presentations, preparing thoroughly and responding dynamically to guide discussions positively.
• Exhibits exceptional decision-making, conflict resolution, perseverance, and follow-through to ensure successful outcomes.

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we're revolutionizing how data and i