Backend Senior Software Engineer, CX Engineering(Hybrid)

This role follows a hybrid work model, with in-office attendance of at least two days per week in Research Triangle Park (RTP), NC or San Jose, CA.

About the role

Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) Engineering organization is one of the company's fastest-growing and most innovative teams, crafting a first-in-class digital experience for customers and partners wherever they connect with Cisco. CX Platform supports the diverse needs of the CX organization through a platform-centric approach and is being built with emerging technologies, including predictive AI and generative AI, to drive greater customer success. The team sits at the center of developing modern, cloud-native technologies that help Cisco stay agile and adaptable in a rapidly evolving market. As pioneers in this space, the team helps customers maximize value through a simple, unified Cisco experience that accelerates time to impact.

The culture is fast-moving, highly collaborative, data-driven, and grounded in ownership, accountability, quality, and urgency.

Advanced experienced professional using best practices and knowledge of internal or external business issues to improve products or services.

Your Impact

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will join our growing team to design and deliver robust, scalable software solutions that enable customers to maximize the value of their Cisco technology investments. You will own the full software development lifecycle—from technical design and backend architecture to deployment—while ensuring high reliability and fault tolerance in distributed systems. Beyond technical execution, you will collaborate closely with internal stakeholders to drive deployment and optimization strategies while mentoring junior engineers to elevate the team’s collective technical expertise.

This role is uniquely exciting as it places you at the intersection of complex cloud-native engineering and direct customer impact, allowing you to solve mission-critical challenges at scale. You will serve as a technical anchor, balancing high-level architectural contributions with hands-on development to build lasting solutions for our global customer base.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver robust, scalable software solutions that enable customers to maximize the value of their Cisco technology investments.
• Own the full software development lifecycle—from technical design and backend architecture to deployment.
• Ensure high reliability and fault tolerance in distributed systems.
• Collaborate closely with internal stakeholders to drive deployment and optimization strategies.
• Mentor junior engineers to elevate the team’s collective technical expertise.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or equivalent field) with 7+ years of experience in the full software development lifecycle (build, test, deploy), or
• Master’s degree with 4+ years of related experience, or
• PhD with 1+ year of related experience.

• Experience in backend development coding in Python, Go, Node.js, Java, or Rust.
• Experience developing REST or GraphQL APIs.
• Experience with relational or NoSQL databases including schema design and query optimization.
• Experience with messaging or event-streaming technologies such as Kafka or AWS SQS/SNS.
• Experience with CI/CD workflows, including building or maintaining pipelines and resolving deployment failures.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and container orchestration, specifically AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Demonstrated experience applying AI-assisted development tools or AIOps practices to improve engineering efficiency.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in software development within distributed production environments.
• Expertise in large-scale data ingestion, transformation (ETL/ELT), and real-time streaming/Change Data Capture (CDC) technologies.
• Strong familiarity with observability practices, including metrics, logging, distributed tracing, and alerting for complex systems.
• Proficiency in modern frontend technologies and frameworks (e.g., Angular, React).

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.

Pay

The starting salary range for this position is $167,700.00 to $245,200.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation, equity, or benefits. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

• New York City Metro Area: $167,700.00 – $282,000.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $149,100.00 – $250,900.00

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
• 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.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 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
• 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

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.