Software Engineering Technical Leader

Cisco•Milpitas, MI

About The Position

The Routing Engineering team for the Cisco 8000 platform develops high-performance software for cloud-scale infrastructure in the IOS-XR environment. The team focuses on architectural optimization, robust packet forwarding, and reliable operations across modular hardware platforms, connecting complex routing protocols with data plane performance for service providers and hyperscale networks. The Software Engineering Technical Leader develops secure, user-centered software in line with Cisco design principles and software development best practices. The role collaborates with design, product management, and other teams to deliver customer-focused solutions; produces technical and user documentation; debugs issues in development and production; and contributes ideas for product innovation and improved engineering processes. The leader provides technical direction, mentors colleagues, leads features and cross-team projects, influences architecture, and advances software quality, security, reliability, and performance.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree and 8 years of related experience, or Master’s degree and 6 years of related experience, or PhD and 3 years of related experience.
Experience in all phases of the software development cycle, with exposure to agile development methodologies.
Experience with C, C++, or Python.
Experience with networking protocols.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with Linux and modern software development and debugging tools and techniques, and validated software design and development skills.
Experience with service provider and data center technologies and architectures.
Knowledge of virtual machines and virtualization technologies.
Development experience in Layer 2 or Layer 3 forwarding.

Responsibilities

Interpret business issues, recommend best practices, and solve complex problems using specialized expertise.
Mentor others, lead small-to-medium features, and manage projects that span multiple teams.
Write clean, functional code that sets team standards.
Influence architectural decisions concerning security, scalability, and reliability, and explain design choices using market awareness and competitive analysis.
Advocate for and innovate features and products that address unmet customer needs, and influence and track success metrics.
Apply expertise in the software development lifecycle and agile strategies; scope work, estimate projects, and negotiate delivery trade-offs with cross-functional partners.
Contribute to product threat modeling and proactively resolve production risks.
Design robust monitoring tools to increase performance.
Lead postmortems and root cause analyses.
Facilitate team knowledge sharing through activities such as brownbags and demos, and contribute to the professional community through blogs or publications.
Serve as an expert on multiple functional components.
Develop software following Cisco design principles, with an emphasis on simplification and user experience, secure coding, user privacy, and software development best practices.
Partner with design, product management, and other teams to create customer-focused solutions.
Create technical design documentation for the team and contribute to end-user documentation.
Debug and address software issues during development and in production systems to support customers.
Bring forward product innovation ideas and improve software development processes.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance for eligible U.S. employees.
401(k) plan with Cisco matching contribution.
Paid parental leave.
Short- and long-term disability coverage.
Basic life insurance.
Eligible employees may receive Cisco restricted stock unit grants.
Paid holidays, floating holiday for non-exempt employees, birthday time off, and year-end holiday shutdown.
Paid vacation or an eligible exempt-employee flexible vacation time-off program.
Paid sick time.
Additional paid time away may be requested for critical or emergency family-member issues.
Optional paid volunteer days.
Annual bonuses for eligible non-sales employees.