Principal Software Engineer
About The Position
The Cisco Secure Access team is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join their cloud security business group. This role involves collaborating across multiple fast-paced teams to design, develop, and deliver scalable, supportable, and maintainable production-quality applications. The engineer will be responsible for building new product capabilities, improving existing processes and architecture, and partnering with internal and external teams to understand business and technical requirements. Key activities include documenting technical specifications, overseeing architecture, design, code quality, and deployments, and communicating technical solutions to leadership. The role also entails participating in design and code reviews, mentoring junior developers, evaluating new technology stacks and third-party tools through proof of concepts and benchmarks, and troubleshooting complex system-level stability and scalability issues.
Requirements
- A Bachelor's degree or higher in Engineering or Computer Science with a minimum of 17+ years of relevant industry experience, or a Master’s degree and 10 years of relevant industry experience owning architecture and technical strategy across multiple teams, from problem definition and system design through rollout, adoption, and operational support.
- 7+ years of experience in a technical leadership role and architecture.
- 10+ years experience in development in AWS cloud or similar and proficiency in Python, Go or Java.
- Deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, APIs, micro-services architecture, data platforms, multi-tenant services, and production operations.
- Experience building agentic systems and leveraging AI to improve productivity across the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Nice To Haves
- Experience with SSE/SASE, zero-trust architecture, identity-aware access, authorization, secure web access, data protection, DNS security, browser isolation, or digital experience monitoring.
- Experience with LLM applications, retrieval-augmented generation, agent orchestration, tool calling, prompt and context management, model evaluation, LLMOps, AI safety, guardrails, and responsible AI.
- Experience with streaming data, feature engineering, anomaly detection, behavioral or graph analytics, model drift, explain-ability, feedback loops, and investigation or analyst workflows.
- Experience with data pipelines handling large volumes and sound knowledge in technologies such as Kafka, Kubernetes, NoSQL.
- Experience with modern frontend frameworks, TypeScript, component or design systems, web performance, accessibility, browser security, API design, and backend-for-frontend architecture.
- Ability to work independently, research current and emerging technologies, propose changes as needed to cater to changing business / technical conditions.
- Ability to optimally lead teams and inspire others to achieve goals through innovation, quality and excellence.
- Excellent debugging skills, ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex system level stability or scalability issues.
- A track record of setting engineering standards, resolving cross-organization architectural tension, mentoring principal-level talent, and communicating complex ideas to mixed audiences.
Responsibilities
- Building new capabilities to the products
- Improving existing processes and architecture
- Developing, partnering with internal and external teams to understand business and technical requirements
- Documenting technical specifications for development
- Overseeing architecture, design, code quality, and deployments
- Documenting and communicating technical solutions to architecture groups and leadership
- Participating in design and code reviews
- Mentoring junior developers
- Evaluating new technology stacks and third-party tools through proof of concepts and benchmarks
- Troubleshooting sophisticated system-level stability and scalability issues
Benefits
- medical insurance
- dental insurance
- vision insurance
- 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
- paid parental leave
- short and long-term disability coverage
- basic life insurance
- 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 (non-exempt employees)
- flexible vacation time off program (exempt employees)
- 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
- annual bonuses (non-sales roles)
- performance-based incentive pay (sales roles)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
