Senior Staff Software Engineer

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

Job summary

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

You will lead complex initiatives, mentor senior engineers, and help scale quality practices across teams. You will partner with Engineering and Product leaders to embed quality earlier in development, drive standards for testing, performance benchmarks, and contract testing, delivering reliable outcomes at

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required with 12+ years in software development, quality engineering, or test automation.
• 5+ years architecting large-scale test automation platforms or ecosystems.
• 5+ years software development in Python and Playwright.
• 5+ years building scalable, maintainable test infrastructure.
• 1+ year using AI-assisted tools or AI agents for test automation.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture and roadmap for Product Quality foundations and automation.
• Lead AI-agent evaluation and validation for SOC workflows and tenant isolation.
• Identify testing gaps and build AI-based automation solutions.
• Establish benchmarking, performance testing, and regression frameworks.
• Mentor engineers and review designs across teams.
• Drive contract testing, compliance validation, and high-quality outcomes at scale.
• Embed quality early in the development lifecycle.

Skills

Python

Playwright

Test automation

Quality engineering

AI-assisted tools

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Claude

Codex

JMeter

AI evaluation tools

Job description

Meet The Team

Cisco is shaping the future of AI-powered quality for Enterprise Security and modern Security Operations Center workflows. Our team is focused on building scalable quality foundations, advanced test automation, evaluation frameworks, and performance validation for complex AI-driven security products. We partner closely with Engineering, Product, Security, and Quality teams to improve reliability, scalability, security, and customer trust across mission-critical platforms.

Your Impact

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will 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

• 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.

Minimum 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.

Preferred Qualifications

Strong technical leadership skills with the ability to turn ambiguous quality challenges into clear technical strategy. Experience with AI/ML testing, LLM APIs, prompt engineering, agentic workflows, and LLM-as-judge evaluation. Experience with Claude, Codex, or similar AI development and evaluation tools. Experience with performance tools such as JMeter, or similar test environments. Strong ability to collaborate across Engineering, Product, Security, Compliance, and Quality teams. Passion for mentoring engineers and building a culture of automation, accountability, and customer-focused quality.

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 $214,100.00 to $309,800.00 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: $214,100.00 - $356,300.00
• Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $192,400.00 - $317,200.00

* 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.

Cisconians power the future. We make impact as a team, innovating fast and fearlessly to create meaningful solutions on a large scale. The depth and breadth of our technology doesn't just benefit our customers – it also means limitless opportunities for us to experiment and learn. We understand the power each of our unique backgrounds bring when we work together. Because of that, we have a global network of thinkers, doers, experts, and curious creators who help one another do their life’s best work.