Senior Staff Engineer - AI Quality & Automation

Cisco Systems, Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 214,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) matching

Stock grants (RSUs)

Paid time off

Parental leave

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. in California seeks a Senior Staff Software Engineer to define and drive the technical strategy for AI-powered quality, agentic workflow validation, benchmarking, and automation frameworks.

You will lead complex technical initiatives, mentor senior engineers, and help establish quality practices that scale across teams and products. Key responsibilities include defining architecture and roadmaps, leading validation strategies for AI agents and SOC workflows, and embedding

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 12+ years of experience in software development, quality engineering, or test automation.
• 5+ years of experience architecting large-scale test automation platforms or quality engineering ecosystems.
• 5+ years software development experience in Python and playwright.
• 5+ years experience designing scalable, maintainable, and high-performance test infrastructure.
• 1+ years experience using AI-assisted tools or AI agents to build and scale test automation.

Responsibilities

• Define the architecture and roadmap for Product Quality foundations, test automation, and AI-agent evaluation frameworks.
• Lead validation strategies for AI agents, complex SOC workflows, tenant isolation, audit logs, and system behavior.
• Identify gaps in current testing methods and build AI-based automation solutions to improve quality, coverage, and efficiency.
• Establish benchmarking, performance testing, and regression frameworks for scalable and reliable product validation.
• Mentor engineers, review technical designs, and guide teams through complex quality and automation challenges.
• Lead proof-of-concepts and define clear success criteria for new testing approaches and AI-assisted automation.
• Partner with Engineering and Product leaders to embed quality earlier in the development lifecycle.
• Drive standards for contract testing, compliance validation, performance testing, and behavioral regression.
• Ensure testing processes deliver reliable, repeatable, and high-quality outcomes at enterprise scale.

Skills

Python

Playwright

Test Automation

Quality Engineering

Large-scale Architecture

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

AI tools

AI agents

Claude

Codex

JMeter

Job description

Cisco Systems, Inc. in California seeks a Senior Staff Software Engineer to define and drive the technical strategy for AI-powered quality, agentic workflow validation, benchmarking, and automation frameworks.

You will lead complex technical initiatives, mentor senior engineers, and help establish quality practices that scale across teams and products. Key responsibilities include defining architecture and roadmaps, leading validation strategies for AI agents and SOC workflows, and embedding