Engineering Product Manager, Developer Foundations

Cisco•Milpitas, CA

5d•$191,400 - $323,600•Remote

About The Position

The AI Software & Platform Group at Cisco is developing the platform for AI application development, initially for Cisco's internal teams and increasingly for partners and third-party developers building on Cisco. The Developer Foundations team provides the underlying substrate for everything, including shared services and building blocks like the app registry, hosting, and the SDK, which are essential for Cloud Control Studio and other applications built on Cisco. This is a small, senior, high-trust team that operates with speed and owns its results. We are seeking a leader to take ownership of these foundations as a product.

Requirements

8+ years in product management or an equivalent discipline, with end-to-end ownership of a platform or infrastructure area and accountability for its outcomes.
Hands-on software engineering background, with experience shipping production code and the ability to earn the trust and respect of senior engineers.
Fluency with AI coding agents, including personal use and understanding of how AI agents build on platforms and APIs.

Nice To Haves

Platform depth: experience with hosting and runtimes, service APIs, SDK design, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and integrating with identity and OAuth systems.
Platform as a product: experience owning APIs, SDKs, or platform services used by other teams.
Internal-customer mindset: experience treating an internal platform as a product with clear contracts and internal customers within large, matrixed enterprises.
External surface: experience exposing a platform externally through public APIs, SDKs, and partner integration and governance.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage credibly with internal teams, external customers, and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Own Developer Foundations: the shared layer that the rest of Cisco builds upon, encompassing core services and building blocks such as the registry, hosting, the SDK, and public APIs, transforming raw infrastructure into a readily usable platform for rapid development.
Set the strategic direction for the foundations layer and be accountable for its outcomes, collaborating closely with engineering leaders and dependent teams.
Treat the foundations as a product with real customers, including Cloud Control Studio, all teams building on Cisco, and increasingly, AI coding agents.
Ensure the building blocks are reliable, coherent, and easy to build upon, enabling faster development of experiences above the substrate.
Manage the external-facing aspects for partners and third-party developers, including public APIs, SDKs, and the integration and governance model for safe external development on Cisco.
Partner with DevNet, Legal, and Security teams to implement external platform exposure.
Achieve measurable outcomes in reliability and performance, speed of development on the foundations, SDK and API adoption, and reduction of friction for dependent experiences.