Senior Staff Software Engineer - AI/Security Platform

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

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) matching

Bonuses

Restricted stock units (RSUs)

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. in San Jose, CA is seeking a Senior Security Platform Engineer to design and implement AI-powered threat detection and scalable data pipelines.

You will prototype new AI features, validate them with security SMEs, and build an end-to-end AIDevOps workflow for rapid experimentation. You will architect distributed systems to handle trillions of events, collaborate with product and security teams, and contribute to AI-native security operations architecture for trusted

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree with 12+ years of related experience or Master's with 8+ years of related experience.
• Security Operations concepts including attack surface management, threat analytics, detection, triage, investigation, and response.
• Security Telemetry Fluency with endpoint logs, network traffic, authentication events, or cloud audit trails.
• Data Platform/ Fabric familiarity including data lakes and warehouses.
• Distributed Systems design with emphasis on storage systems and access layers.
• Proficiency in Python for backend services, APIs, and automation.
• CI/CD pipelines, GitHub/GitLab, Jira, and automated testing frameworks.
• Experience designing agent systems that perform coding tasks.
• Collaborating with product managers, security SMEs, and engineers to iterate quickly.

Responsibilities

• Design and build systems that combine security-relevant data, detection signals, context, and foundation models to spot an predict threats.
• Prototype and test new AI features with security SMEs and researchers to validate real-world utility.
• Develop an AIDevOps pipeline for rapid experimentation with data, knowledge bases, models, and context memory.
• Architect and build the distributed platform to correlate trillions of events & signals into explainable findings and alerts for triage agents.
• Collaborate with product and platform teams to co-design AI-enhanced threat detection workflows that are scalable and useful to analysts.
• Contribute to the core architecture powering AI-native security operations and scale trusted automation across the enterprise.

Skills

Security Operations

Telemetry Fluency

Data Platform / Data Lakes

Security Data Engineering

Distributed Systems

Senior-Level Python Development

DevOps / SecOps

Agentic development

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree with 12+ years

Master's degree with 8+ years

Tools

Jira

GitHub

GitLab

Splunk APIs

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 09/17/2026

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

We are an agile team with a startup feel and a strong bias for action. We move fast, embrace failure as part of the process, and stay focused on solving real-world problems for defenders on the front lines. Our team blends deep expertise in AI, cybersecurity, platform and systems engineering. We are driven by a shared belief that the only way to outpace hackers is through AI advancements that free up humans to tackle real threats and more challenging problems.

This is a place for builders who thrive in ambiguity, challenge the status quo, and care deeply about making a meaningful impact. If you’re energized by tough problems, excited to shape the future of cyber defense, and eager to work alongside passionate experts, you’ll feel right at home.

Your Impact

• Design and build systems that combine security-relevant data, detection signals, context, and foundation models to spot an predict threats, those in action and those that are about to happen.
• Prototype and test new AI features - from decoding events and system environments to predicting anomalies and threats - working closely with security SMEs and security researchers to validate real-world utility.
• Develop an AIDevOps pipeline to enable rapid experimentation with data. Knowledge bases, models, and context memory, using clear, measurable success criteria to evaluate iterations.
• Architect and build the distributed platform that can correlate trillions of events & signals, and can synthesize them into explainable findings and alerts, consumed by our triage resolution agents – you will be building a key capability of the Agentic SOC.
• Collaborate with product and platform teams to co-design AI-enhanced threat detection and prediction workflows that are intuitive, scalable, and immediately useful to analysts.
• Contribute to the core architecture powering AI-native security operations, helping to shape how Splunk and Cisco scale trusted automation across the enterprise.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree with 12+ years of related experience or Master's with 8+ years of related experience.

Security:

• Security Operations Experience – Understanding of security operations concepts, including attack surface management, threat analytics, detection, triage, investigation, and response.
• Security Telemetry Fluency – Comfortable working with common data sources such as endpoint logs, network traffic, authentication events, or cloud audit trails—and understanding how they’re used in detection and investigation workflows.

Engineering Experience:

• Data Platform/Fabric Familiarity – Experience implementing data platforms and/or data lakes and warehouses.
• Security Data Engineering – Experience building and maintaining pipelines for ingesting, parsing, and normalizing large-scale security telemetry.
• Distributed Systems design and implementation expertise – with an emphasis on storage systems and storage access layers

Senior-Level Python Development

• Consistent record building scalable backend services, APIs, and automation workflows in Python.

DevOps/SecOps Practices

• Proficient with CI/CD pipelines, version control (GitHub/GitLab), Jira, and automated testing frameworks.

Agentic development –

• Experience designing agent systems that will perform coding tasks for you.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Experience partnering with product managers, security SMEs, and engineers to iterate quickly and deliver impactful solutions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Enterprise-grade Security Product Experience – Familiarity with TDIR/SIEM architectures, correlation searches, threat hunting support systems. Bonus if you’ve worked with Splunk’s APIs, internals, or have experience developing on the Splunk platform.
• Security Operations Background – Former Tier 3 SOC analyst or equivalent, with experience automating SecOps workflows and building scalable, resilient detection infrastructure.
• Data Encoding & Embeddings – Exposure to event storage systems or generating custom embeddings for domain-specific tasks in cybersecurity.
• RAG and GraphRAG Search Implementation – Hands-on experience developing retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and working with databases (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone).
• Model Integration – Skilled in crafting, testing, and optimizing training workloads for large language or special-purpose models such as GNNs, GCNs, GATs. Ideally, you have contributed to or shipped an AI-powered feature or product, and understand the nuances of integrating models into real-world workflows - including usability, performance, and trust considerations.
• AI Evaluation & Experimentation – Capable of designing experiments to evaluate model output for accuracy, usability, performance, and cost.
• UX and Human Factors for Analysts – Background or interest in designing intuitive, AI-assisted analyst workflows with a focus on usability, trust, and decision support.

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.