Technical Leader, Software Engineer (AI Canvas)

Cisco•Milpitas, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

We’re building the next generation of AI-powered experiences at Cisco—and we’d love your help! As a Technical Leader on our AI Software and Platform team, you will play a key role in shaping how our products use AI at scale. You will work with us to design and evolve the backend platform that powers AI Canvas, AI Assistant, and AI capabilities across Cisco Cloud Control, Thousand Eyes, Hypershield, Duo, Meraki, Splunk, and Security Cloud Control. Together, we are creating systems that make complex technology easier to use through AI. You will help us build reliable, scalable distributed systems and guide how we bring LLM-powered features from idea to production.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in backend software engineering, including technical leadership.
Comfortable working in Python and understand asynchronous programming and concurrency.
Experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems and scaling systems to multi-million monthly active users (MAU).
Experience building AI or LLM-powered applications, such as orchestration layers or retrieval-augmented systems.
Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools like Temporal or Airflow.
Understanding of how to operate systems in production, including observability practices such as metrics, tracing, and logging.
Experience with cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes.
Familiarity with modern CI/CD practices.
Clear communication, effective collaboration, and comfort leading technical discussions across teams.
Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Codex, or Claude Code.
Comfort working in structured, spec-driven development environments and understanding how to move from idea to implementation through clear stages.
Experience with modern development workflows that include planning, execution, and review.
Familiarity with parallel development approaches and understanding how to maintain quality when working with AI-generated code.

Nice To Haves

Experience with agentic AI systems or frameworks.
Familiarity with LLM APIs such as Azure OpenAI or AWS Bedrock.
Experience with real-time systems.
Experience with authentication models.
Experience with feature flagging tools.

Responsibilities

Lead architecture and design while working closely with teams across engineering, product, and SRE.
Design backend services for our unified platform, including orchestration, skill execution, and intelligent routing.
Scale systems that support millions of users and ensure they remain reliable and performant.
Guide how we build asynchronous processing pipelines using tools like Temporal and modern streaming systems.
Integrate with LLM platforms such as Azure OpenAI and AWS Bedrock in a way that balances performance, reliability, and cost.
Partner with teams to improve observability, strengthen system reliability, and solve complex production challenges.
Mentor engineers, lead design discussions, and help us continuously improve how we build software.

Benefits

Competitive pay
Strong health benefits
Flexible work options
Opportunities to grow your career
Learn new technologies
Work on meaningful problems that reach millions of users
Medical insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
Paid parental leave
Short-term disability coverage
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
Up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward
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)