Software Engineering Technical Leader
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 system 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 software using Cisco’s Design Thinking Principles, with a focus on simplification and user experience, secure coding, user privacy, and software development best practices. The role partners with design, product management, and other teams to deliver customer-focused solutions; creates technical design documentation and contributes to user documentation; debugs issues during development and in production; and supports product innovation and improvements to development processes. The leader provides technical expertise across multiple functional components, mentors others, leads features and cross-team projects, influences architecture, and drives reliable delivery, monitoring, and production risk resolution.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree and 8 years of related experience, or a master’s degree and 6 years of related experience, or a PhD and 3 years of related experience.
- Experience across all phases of the software development cycle, including 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.
- 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 spanning multiple teams.
- Write clean, functional code that establishes team standards.
- Influence architectural decisions involving 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, provide project estimates, and negotiate delivery trade-offs with cross-functional partners.
- Contribute to product threat modeling and proactively resolve production risks.
- Design robust monitoring tools to improve performance.
- Lead postmortems and root cause analyses.
- Facilitate 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.
- Partner with design, product management, and other teams to develop customer-focused solutions.
- Create technical design documentation and contribute to end-user documentation.
- Debug and address software issues during development and in production systems to support customers.
Benefits
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401(k) plan with Cisco matching contribution
- Paid parental leave
- Short- and long-term disability coverage
- Basic life insurance
- Restricted stock unit grants may be available, subject to continued employment and vesting terms.
- Paid holidays and a floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- Paid birthday day off
- Paid year-end holiday shutdown
- Paid personal wellness days
- Paid vacation or a flexible vacation time off program, depending on employee classification
- Paid sick time, with limited carryforward of unused sick time
- Additional paid time away may be requested for critical or emergency family issues
- Optional paid volunteer days
- Annual bonuses may be available for non-sales roles, subject to Cisco policies.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
