Software Engineering Technical Leader - BackEnd

Cisco Systems; North Carolina; On-site; USD 152,000 - 222,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental and vision

401(k) matching

Parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

RSU grants

Job summary

Cisco Systems in the United States is seeking a Software Engineering Technical Leader to drive the next generation of enterprise AI and cloud-native platforms. You will shape multi-year roadmaps, bridge business goals with high-throughput architectures, and mentor leaders across the CX Engineering organization.

You will design end-to-end cloud topologies, architect AI applications like RAG, and enforce security with zero-trust patterns while promoting best practices across API contracts,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher with 8+ years related experience or Master's with 6+ years related experience.
• 4+ years’ experience in software development as a Technical Lead or similar lead role across large scale systems.
• Python production experience building microservices and event-driven architectures.
• Cloud-native experience (AWS, GCP, Azure), container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker), and CI/CD.
• Experience designing high-concurrency distributed data pipelines and messaging systems (Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB/Cassandra).
• API contract design (gRPC, REST, GraphQL) and domain-driven design (DDD).

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end design and topology for multi-tenant cloud platforms.
• Architect AI applications including RAG, agentic workflows, and multi-modal LLM orchestration.
• Design fault-tolerant, high-throughput distributed systems with global data persistence.
• Enforce zero-trust patterns and data protection with Vault and OAuth2/OIDC.
• Chair architecture review boards and promote API contracts, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and observability.
• Mentor engineers and align teams toward enterprise goals.
• Partner with product and execs to translate strategy into actionable plans.

Skills

Python

Kubernetes

Docker

Kafka

API design

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

HashiCorp Vault

OAuth2/OIDC

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 10/29/2026

Meet the Team

Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) engineering organization is a global team of experts dedicated to delivering world-class digital experiences by building advanced AI applications and capabilities through an industry leading platform centric approach with Cisco IQ. These capabilities provide high value directly to our customers and partners and empower our internal teams to deliver superior, data-driven services. We pride ourselves on a culture that thrives on customer-centricity and technical rigor, solving complex challenges leveraging AI/ML solutions.

Your Impact

As a Software Engineering Technical Leader in Cisco’s CX Engineering organization, you will serve as the principal technical authority driving the next generation of enterprise AI and cloud-native platforms. Scaling beyond team-level execution, you will define multi-year roadmaps, bridge complex business goals with high-throughput architectures, and elevate engineering excellence by mentoring technical leaders across the organization.

• Strategic Architectural Vision: Lead the end-to-end design and system topology for multi-tenant cloud platforms, evaluating emerging technologies to drive governance across microservices and hybrid data environments.
• Enterprise AI & Autonomous Systems: Architect foundational AI applications, including distributed Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agentic workflows, multi-modal LLM orchestrations, and secure vector retrieval systems.
• High-Scale Distributed Systems: Design fault-tolerant, elastic systems by establishing company-wide standards for concurrency control, high-throughput messaging (Apache Kafka), caching, and multi-region data persistence.
• Security, Compliance & Resilience: Enforce zero-trust integration patterns and data protection standards (HashiCorp Vault, OAuth2/OIDC) while ensuring compliance with enterprise Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
• Technical Governance & Engineering Standards: Conduct global architecture review boards (ARBs) and champion best practices across API contracts (gRPC/REST), Kubernetes orchestration, CI/CD, and observability.
• Leadership & Organizational Influence: Mentor Lead Software Engineers and drive technical consensus across matrixed pods, aligning disparate technology stacks toward unified enterprise goals.
• Executive Alignment: Partner with product and engineering executives to translate long-term business strategy into actionable execution blueprints.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s with 8+ years of related experience or Master’s with 6+ years of related experience.
• 4+ years’ experience in software development as a Technical Lead or similar lead role across large scale systems.
• Python experience building production grade microservices and event driven architectures.
• Technical experience in cloud-native ecosystems (such as AWS, GCP, or Azure), container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker), and automated CI/CD infrastructures.
• Experience designing high-concurrency, distributed data pipelines and messaging systems (e.g., Apache Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB/Cassandra).
• Background in API contract design (gRPC, REST, GraphQL) and systemic domain-driven design (DDD).

Preferred Qualifications

• Strategic Product Vision: Demonstrated success in shaping overarching backend product strategies and data architectures, including evaluating and implementing pioneering capabilities (example – AI driven pipelines) to influence multi-year business roadmaps.
• AI/ML Platform Architecture: Demonstrated history architecting scalable MLOps, LLM integration frameworks, agentic AI platforms, fine-tuning infrastructure, or large-scale hybrid/vector search engine integrations (e.g., Pinecone, Qdrant).
• Operational Excellence: Experience establishing observability platforms (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana), chaos engineering protocols, and formal site reliability engineering (SRE) frameworks.
• Industry & Strategic Influence: Active involvement in driving open-source contributions, technology patents, enterprise architecture standards, or speaking at industry conferences.
• Soft Skills: Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity, drive technical consensus, and communicate complex architectural concepts to divers stakeholders.

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 $151,600.00 to $222,400.00 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:

$186,900.00 - $307,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$166,300.00 - $274,100.00

• 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.

Cisco is an Affimative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis.

Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.