Technical Leader, Site Reliability Engineer

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. seeks an experienced engineer to design, deploy, and operate highly scalable data platforms across AWS and private clouds.

You will drive automation, capacity planning, and reliability for production systems, collaborating with teams across development, product, and operations. The role emphasizes automation, incident management, and data access strategies, with a strong focus on Cassandra, OpenSearch, Kafka, and PostgreSQL.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or equivalent work experience.
• 8+ years deploying, monitoring, and scaling distributed databases.
• 5+ years managing AWS infrastructure at scale and supporting SaaS.
• 5+ years of DevOps practices with CI/CD and IaC.
• 3+ years leading technical projects.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and operate large-scale distributed data platforms across AWS and private cloud environments.
• Lead cloud engineering initiatives to automate infrastructure and improve reliability.
• Drive capacity planning and performance optimization for high-throughput systems.
• Ensure platform integrity through automated backup, patching, and incident workflows.
• Act as a technical consultant on data access patterns, cloud architecture, and migrations.

Skills

Distributed databases

AWS infrastructure

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD

Python

Java

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

CassandraDB

OpenSearch

Kafka

PostgreSQL

Terraform

Ansible

Kubernetes

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Python

Job description

This position will perform work that the U.S. government has specified can only be performed by a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.

Meet the Team

Cisco’s Collaboration Business Unit empowers people and organizations worldwide to connect, communicate, and innovate seamlessly.

You will collaborate with a global team of software engineers and SREs responsible for delivering extraordinary collaboration experiences at scale. Our team supports backend services deployed worldwide and works closely with development, product, and operations partners to ensure reliability and performance.

Webex is powering the shift to the hybrid workforce, helping people stay connected in a rapidly evolving digital world. We cultivate a startup-like culture that values innovation, ownership, and collaboration, while offering the scale and impact of a global technology leader.

Your Impact

You’ll design, deploy, and operate resilient large-scale distributed data platforms across AWS and private cloud environments, with a focus on Cassandra, Kafka, and OpenSearch. You’ll lead cloud engineering initiatives that automate infrastructure and improve reliability and deployment velocity using Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes, while driving capacity planning and performance optimization for high-throughput production systems. You’ll also ensure platform integrity through automated backup, security patching, and incident management workflows, and serve as a trusted technical consultant to application teams on data access patterns, cloud architecture, and migration strategies. Above all, you’ll build infrastructure designed to scale, recover from regional outages, and eliminate repetitive operational work through thoughtful automation.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelors and 8+ years of hands‑on experience deploying, monitoring, scaling, and upgrading distributed databases such as CassandraDB, OpenSearch, Kafka, and PostgreSQL.
• 5+ years managing AWS infrastructure at scale and supporting live, customer‑facing SaaS production environments.
• 5+ years of experience with infrastructure automation and DevOps practices, including CI/CD (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes), and Python.
• 3+ years leading technical projects, including task estimation, milestone tracking, and stakeholder communication.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with modern data platforms, including data pipelines, streaming, AI/ML and GenAI workloads; Java/Python data‑driven applications and data access patterns; and regulated U.S. Federal environments.

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 ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto 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.