Staff Software Engineer - Agent Observability (Galileo)

Cisco Systems, Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 187,000 - 268,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Life insurance

Vision insurance

Parental leave

Paid holidays

Sick time

401(k)

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. in the San Jose area is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Agent Observability (Galileo) to lead the design and development of scalable backend systems supporting AI agent observability and resilience.

You will contribute hands-on coding in Python and Go, mentor engineers, and drive architectural decisions while collaborating with product managers, AI researchers, and other Cisco teams to deliver enterprise-grade observability capabilities.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of production backend software experience in Python and/or Go.
• Experience leading multi-engineer design and delivery.
• Experience with distributed systems and scalable APIs.
• Architecture decisions focused on scalability and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of large-scale backend systems supporting AI agent observability and resilience.
• Drive complex engineering initiatives from technical design through production deployment.
• Design and develop distributed systems, APIs, and data processing capabilities ingesting telemetry from multiple services.
• Contribute hands-on production code in Python and/or Go, lead technical design and code reviews, mentor engineers, and drive architectural decisions.
• Collaborate with product managers, AI researchers, and engineering teams across Cisco to deliver customer-facing capabilities; participate in on-call rotations.

Skills

Backend development

Python

Go

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Code reviews

Education

Bachelor’s+ Exp

Master’s+ Exp

Job description

Staff Software Engineer - Agent Observability (Galileo)

life insurance, vision insurance, parental leave, paid holidays, sick time, 401(k)

The application window is expected to close on: 11/04/2026

Meet the Team

Galileo, now part of Cisco, is advancing how enterprises observe, evaluate, and secure AI agents. Our Agent Resilience platform helps organizations understand AI agent performance, evaluate quality, monitor token usage and costs, and implement runtime controls to improve reliability and security.

As part of Cisco's Agent Resilience Team, you'll work at the intersection of AI, observability, security, and distributed systems. We're building innovative capabilities in AI observability, distributed tracing, multimodal evaluation, and agent control, with opportunities to integrate across Splunk AI Observability and Cisco's broader technology portfolio.

You'll join a collaborative product engineering team working alongside backend and frontend engineers, AI researchers, product managers, and designers. This is an opportunity to influence the technical direction of emerging AI products, solve complex engineering challenges at enterprise scale, and shape how organizations manage and operate AI agents.

Your Impact

As a Software Engineering Technical Leader on the Agent Resilience Team, you will lead the technical design and development of scalable, customer-facing products that enable enterprises to monitor, evaluate, and control AI agent behavior. You'll combine hands‑on engineering with technical leadership, driving complex initiatives across multiple engineers while guiding architectural decisions and ensuring reliable delivery.

• Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of large‑scale backend systems supporting AI agent observability, distributed tracing, multimodal evaluation, AI metrics, and agent control capabilities.

• Drive complex engineering initiatives from technical design through production deployment, coordinating work across engineers, defining technical approaches, and guiding implementation to deliver scalable, maintainable solutions.

• Design and develop distributed systems, APIs, and data processing capabilities that ingest telemetry from multiple services and generate actionable insights from generative AI traces, metrics, and events.

• Contribute hands‑on production code in Python and/or Go, lead technical design and code reviews, mentor engineers, and drive architectural decisions that improve product performance, reliability, and engineering quality.

• Collaborate with product managers, AI researchers, and engineering teams across Splunk and Cisco to deliver customer‑facing capabilities. Participate in a shared on‑call rotation, typically one week approximately every two months, depending on team size, to support production reliability.

Success in this role means delivering complex technical initiatives through collaboration with other engineers, establishing scalable architectures, improving production reliability, and advancing enterprise AI observability and resilience capabilities.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 8+ years of related experience, or Master's degree with 6+ years of related experience, or equivalent practical experience.

• 8+ years of experience developing production backend software applications and services using Python and/or Go.

• Experience leading the technical design and delivery of complex software systems or projects involving multiple engineers, including coordinating technical work and providing engineering guidance.

• Experience designing and developing distributed systems, backend architectures, and APIs for scalable, high‑throughput, data‑intensive applications.

• Experience making technical architecture decisions involving system scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing customer‑facing products involving AI/ML, generative AI, large language models (LLMs), or agentic applications.

• Experience building AI observability, evaluation, or monitoring capabilities, including LLM tracing, distributed tracing, or OpenTelemetry.

• Experience designing or operating distributed data processing systems using Kafka, ClickHouse, or similar streaming and analytical data technologies.

• Experience developing enterprise observability, analytics, or monitoring products that process and analyze telemetry from multiple services.

• Experience leading cross‑team technical initiatives, mentoring engineers, and influencing architectural decisions across engineering teams.

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 $186,900.00 to $267,700.00 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.