Lead Escalation Engineer

Cisco•Milpitas, CA

1d•$186,900 - $267,700

About The Position

The Datacenter Switching team at Cisco is at the core of AI Networking. We are responsible for designing and developing the next generation of high-performance networking solutions for massive-scale cloud and AI environments. Our work focuses on the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series (Nexus 9K) switches, which serve as the foundational building blocks for modern data center architectures. Nexus 9K switches are critical in modern data centers for providing the high-density, low-latency, and power-efficient performance required for leaf-and-spine fabrics. We focus on building and optimizing Cisco’s architecture to meet the demands of modern data center workloads and automated cloud environments. The team drives innovation in GPU-Connectivity with architectures to support high-compute clusters. Our scope includes the development of diverse fabric technologies, such as Pure L3, VXLAN, and SRv6 fabrics. Engineers on this team solve complex challenges in programmability, scalability, and telemetry at the core of the global internet infrastructure.

Requirements

Bachelors + 8 years of related experience, or Masters + 6 years of related experience, or PhD + 3 years of related experience.
Experience with Datacenter Switches and Networking.
Experience in dealing with customer escalations, troubleshooting skills on L2/L3 technologies, NXOS infrastructure.

Nice To Haves

L2/L3/VXLAN forwarding, AI-Networking - Customer Support handling experience, with scripting/development knowledge in networking.
Comfortable using AI tools such as Copilot and Cursor.
Ability to design and maintain scalable infrastructure automation using Python.
Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to bridge technical and non-technical customers to drive project alignment.

Responsibilities

Uses specialized expertise in one or more areas to interpret internal or external business issues and recommends best practices.
Solves complex problems and takes abroad perspective to identify innovative solutions. May lead small-to-medium features from technical design through completion.
May lead projects that span multiple teams; manages workload and workstreams holistically.
Influences a defined software engineering roadmap.
May lead medium-to-large features from technical design through completion.
Guides in the development and implementation of the software development lifecycle, and agile engineering strategies across applicable teams and partners.
Leads and mentors others, and improves the technical design of solutions Advocates for new features within a product to address customer needs.
Articulates design choices based on an expert understanding of market awareness, product adoption, and competition.
Innovates new products to address unmet customer needs
Influences and tracks metrics to measure success
Writes functional clean code and unit tests at a level that sets the standard for coding across teams.
Influences architectural decisions with a focus on security, scalability and reliability.
Contributes to threat modeling of a product.
Proactively identifies, prioritizes, and resolves risk and issues in production systems.
Designs and implements robust monitoring tools that provide visibility and reliability and acts on the data and alerts to increase future performance.
Leads postmortems and reviews root cause analysis, ensures on call coverage.
Expert on multiple functional components
May contribute to knowledge sharing among the wider professional community with technical blogs or publications.
Scopes work accurately and provides reliable estimates for project milestones and completion.
Communicates delivery trade-offs and negotiates with multi-functional partners to align on direction and outcomes.
Mentors peers or others on the team

Benefits

medical, dental and vision insurance
a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
paid parental leave
short and long-term disability coverage
basic life insurance
grants of Cisco restricted stock units
10 paid holidays per full calendar year
1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
1 paid day off for employee’s birthday
paid year-end holiday shutdown
4 paid days off for personal wellness
16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees (non-exempt)
flexible vacation time off program (exempt)
80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter
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
annual bonuses (for non-sales roles)
performance-based incentive pay (for sales roles)