Technical Lead, AI-Native Software Engineering (hybrid) - 2025652

020 Cisco Systems, Inc.; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 172,000 - 245,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a Technical Lead for AI-Native Software Engineering to shape technical direction across security tooling and AI-assisted development workflows.

This hybrid role requires strong architectural judgment and hands-on engineering leadership to guide teams through complex problems with urgency. You will collaborate with other technical leaders, defend architectural choices, and stay involved in design and code reviews when needed to ensure robust, scalable solutions

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or demonstrated equivalent experience.
• Extensive, hands-on software engineering experience with a track record of architectural decisions for important systems.
• Deep expertise in software engineering design, architecture, and scale to defend strong technical designs.
• Experience guiding or mentoring engineers on technical decisions without formal management responsibility.
• Fluency in AI-native software development practices and ability to model and guide the same judgment.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction across the team's portfolio of work and guide engineers on deep architectural decisions.
• Lead on the hardest technical problems with optimized, defensible architectures.
• Mentor engineers on sound technical and architectural choices and defend them logically.
• Collaborate with other teams to resolve cross-cutting problems and drive shared decisions with urgency.
• Stay hands-on by reviewing designs and code where it matters.

Skills

Architectural decisions

Mentoring engineers

AI-native software development

Technical leadership

Education

BS or MS in CS/CE

Tools

APIs design

AI tooling

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 10/29/2026 Technical Lead, AI-Native Software Engineering (hybrid) - 2025652 *hybrid role, some onsite activity required

Meet the Team

The Security Workflow Engineering team, as part of the Security & Trust Organization, is responsible for engineering and delivering tools that help discover, mitigate, and report on security engineering across every application, platform, and service that Cisco delivers to its customers. It is our responsibility to provide an end-to-end digital experience with automation to help engineering across Cisco. At our core, we are a team of engineers, with a focus on AI assisted security tooling, committed to helping develop tools that strive to seamlessly integrate and support building security into the development workflow.

Your Impact

We're looking for a Technical Lead to set the technical direction across our team's full body of work. It's a role for someone whose depth of software engineering experience makes them the person the team turns to when an architectural decision actually matters. You'll be front and center on the technology-heavy problems: the ones that need a strong, well-reasoned opinion, not just a functioning solution. You'll guide engineers on how to make sound technical and architectural choices, by bringing hard-won judgment that your reasoning holds up under scrutiny. You'll also work across team boundaries with other technical leaders, reasoning through shared problems and driving decisions that drive forward progress. This work moves fast, and you bring a real sense of urgency to it — treating technical debt and open decisions as things to resolve now, not eventually.

You will:

• Set technical direction across the team's portfolio of work and be the person engineers accelerate to when a decision genuinely needs deep expertise.
• Take the lead on the hardest technical problems — the ones that call for a strongly reasoned, optimized, and defensible architecture.
• Guide software engineers on making sound technical and architectural choices, sharing the judgment that comes from having made — and learned from — those choices many times before.
• Collaborate with technical leaders on other teams to reason through cross-cutting problems and drive shared decisions forward, with urgency.
• Stay hands‑on enough to be credible: reviewing designs and code where it matters, not managing from a distance.

Who You Are

Software engineering is a passion for you, not just a skill you picked up — it shows in the depth and care behind your technical opinions. You have vast, hands‑on software engineering experience, and it shows in how quickly you can spot the right architecture for a problem versus one that will cause pain down the line. You form strong, well‑reasoned technical opinions and can defend them logically, while staying genuinely open to adapting to novel ideas for solving challenges. You’re comfortable being the person accountable for technical decisions, not just contributing an opinion among many. You can guide and influence other engineers' technical judgment without formal authority over them. You work well with other technical leaders who don't report to you, building enough credibility and trust that decisions get made rather than stalled. You operate with a sense of urgency — you know the difference between a decision that deserves careful deliberation and one that's just sitting there costing the team time.

Minimum Qualifications

• BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or demonstrated equivalent experience.
• Extensive, hands‑on software engineering experience, with a track record of making architectural decisions for systems that mattered and held up.
• Deep expertise in software engineering - design architecture, implementation, scale - sufficient to propose and defend highly optimized, well‑reasoned technical designs under scrutiny.
• Demonstrated experience guiding or mentoring other engineers on technical and architectural decision‑making, without formal management responsibility.
• Fluency in AI-native software development practices, since you'll be expected to model and guide the same judgment you're asking the team to develop.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building tools in the security space — product/application security, threat intelligence, compliance/governance
• Experience designing APIs, tools, or services that AI agents use directly (e.g., MCP servers or function/tool interfaces)
• Experience setting up AI-native practices for an AI-native software engineering team.

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 $171,600.00 to $245,000.00 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: $171,600.00 - $281,800.00 Non‑Metro New York state & Washington state: $151,300.00 - $250,900.00 * 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.