Technical Leader - Dataplane Engineering

Cisco Systems, Inc.•Little Rock, AR

36d•Remote

About The Position

Join the core Hypershield Data Plane team within Cisco's Security Business Group-an industry-first effort redefining how modern distributed security is built. We are engineering the data path for a highly available, AI-designed security fabric that protects applications across public clouds, private data centers, and physical environments. This team is building segmented firewalling directly in the data plane-a first-of-its-kind innovation not available elsewhere in the industry. Engineers on this team get end-to-end ownership of packet processing systems, deep exposure to DPUs (AMD), NPUs, and P4, and the opportunity to shape foundational architecture in a fast-paced, high-visibility environment. If you want to work on the core of the data path, build something new, and learn deeply from day one-this is the place. In this role, you will design, build, and optimize the data plane for Cisco Hypershield using C++, P4, and hardware offload technologies such as DPUs and NPUs. You'll work hands-on with AMD DPU specifications, packet processing pipelines, and performance-critical components from day one. Success in this role means operating in a fast-paced model-quickly absorbing the architecture, contributing to data-plane development immediately, and delivering reliable, high-performance code with minimal hand-holding.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
7+ years of experience in packet processing (e.g., DPDK, TCP reassembly, high-throughput pipelines).
Programming experience in C/C++ and experience with P4 or microcode/U-code development.
Experience bringing up platforms or ASICs in Linux-based environments.
Hands-on experience building or leveraging hardware acceleration with DPUs or NPUs.

Nice To Haves

Experience working with AMD DPUs, Broadcom, Marvell, or Intel data-path hardware.
Deep understanding of P4 compiler behavior, pipeline stages, and programmable switch architecture.
Experience with performance analysis, tuning, and optimization of high-throughput systems.
Prior background in designing test harnesses, working with third-party SDKs, or hardware debug.
Experience owning features end-to-end in a distributed or high-availability networking product.

Responsibilities

Design and implement data-plane features using P4, microcode, and C++ across DPU/NPU architectures.
Bring up hardware platforms, integrate SDKs, and debug low-level packet-processing behavior.
Work from AMD technical specifications to define and build performant pipelines.
Collaborate closely with internal teams (control plane, management plane, platform) to deliver end-to-end datapath functionality.
Drive system-level architecture discussions and influence design choices for high-throughput and low-latency packet processing.

Benefits

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco's plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance.
Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
1 paid day off for employee's birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
Exempt employees participate in Cisco's flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and 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

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