Technical Leader, SIte Reliability Engineer

Cisco Systems, Inc.; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a senior Platform Engineer to lead the design and operation of our Kubernetes platforms across cloud and on-prem environments. You will guide reliability, security, and developer productivity for hundreds of teams using Infrastructure-as-Code and GitOps.

A strong leadership presence and hands-on expertise are essential for driving platform roadmaps and incident responses. The role emphasizes cross-functional collaboration with security, product, and engineering

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) and 12+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production environments.
• 7+ years operating Kubernetes platforms in production with multi-cluster environments and cloud-native infrastructure across AWS, Azure, GCP, on-prem or hybrid clouds.
• IaC and GitOps experience, specifically Terraform and ArgoCD.
• SRE practices including SLOs/SLIs, incident management, and automated remediation.
• Strong communication and leadership to influence engineers, architects, and executives.
• Software engineering experience with Go, Python, or similar languages for automation.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, and optimization of Kubernetes platform capabilities at scale.
• Drive reliability, security, and developer productivity using IaC and GitOps.
• Partner with security, product, and engineering teams to deliver platform roadmaps.
• Provide technical leadership during incidents, architecture reviews, and platform transformations.
• Mentor senior engineers and raise engineering standards through reviews and automation.

Skills

Go

Python

Leadership

Communication

SRE

Terraform

ArgoCD

GitOps

Education

Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent)

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

ArgoCD

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

The Platform Engineering organization is responsible for building and operating the foundational cloud-native platforms that power engineering across Cisco Network Platform. Our team owns the Kubernetes ecosystem used by thousands of developers, spanning hundreds of clusters across public and on-premise environments. We provide the infrastructure, automation, observability, security, and self-service capabilities that enable product teams to build and operate services reliably at scale. We are a highly collaborative team of SREs who enjoy solving complex distributed systems challenges. Our culture emphasizes ownership, operational excellence, automation, and continuous improvement. This is an opportunity to shape the future of Kubernetes and platform engineering within Cisco Network Platform while influencing the experience of engineers across the company.

Your Impact

• Lead the design, implementation, and optimization of our Kubernetes platform capabilities across cloud and on-premises environments, supporting mission-critical workloads at scale.
• Drive technical initiatives that improve reliability, security, scalability, and developer productivity for hundreds of engineering teams using Infrastructure-as-Code and GitOps.
• Partner with engineering, security, and product teams to execute platform roadmaps and deliver on company-critical reliability goals.
• Provide technical leadership during major incidents, architecture reviews, platform transformations, and strategic infrastructure investments.
• Mentor senior engineers and help raise the engineering bar through hands‑on technical leadership, code/design reviews, operational excellence, and automated remediation.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) and 12+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production environments, with a proven track record of leading cross‑organizational platform initiatives.
• 7+ years of experience operating Kubernetes platforms and cloud‑native infrastructure in production (including multi‑cluster environments) and expertise in cloud‑native infrastructure across AWS, Azure, GCP, on‑prem or hybrid clouds.
• Prior experience designing, operating, and troubleshooting networking architectures for large‑scale Kubernetes platforms, including CNI implementations and service mesh.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and GitOps technologies, specifically utilizing Terraform and ArgoCD.
• Experience implementing SRE practices, including SLOs/SLIs, incident management, production readiness reviews, and automated remediation.
• Strong communication and leadership skills with the ability to effectively influence engineers, architects, senior leaders, and executive stakeholders.
• Strong software engineering experience with Go, Python, ruby, or similar programming languages used for automation and platform development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with migrating monolithic applications to a microservices architecture.
• Knowledge of foundational networking concepts (e.g., switching, routing, Wi‑Fi, IoT).
• Advanced knowledge of observability tools and implementing comprehensive monitoring strategies for distributed systems.
• Experience driving toil reduction through advanced automation and self‑service developer platforms.

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 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:

$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.