Forward Deployed Engineer Secure Services Edge (Remote)

This is a fully remote position and can be based anywhere in the United States.

About the role

Cisco Security Business Group (SBG) is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer in a customer-facing role that focuses on technical leadership, two-way advocacy, and expertise across our Security Service Edge (SSE) portfolio. This role combines deep networking and security expertise with the opportunity to influence product direction, solve critically important customer challenges, and serve as the technical link between engineering and our most strategic enterprise customers.

Cisco SSE offers a comprehensive end-to-end zero trust access security portfolio including VPN, zero trust access, web inspection in the cloud, firewall as a service, CASB, DLP and more. Cisco SSE deployment flexibility allows customers to select solutions tailored to their needs and transition seamlessly as requirements evolve.

You will work globally across regions and time zones in support of our largest and most strategic SSE customers, coordinating with globally distributed engineering teams. Expect participation in a follow-the-sun escalation model and significant travel to customer sites and engineering hubs.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical liaison between Cisco SSE product management and engineering and our largest, most strategic enterprise SSE customers.
• Represent the product organization to customers by clearly recommending deployment best practices, issue findings, root causes, workarounds, product constraints, and delivery timelines.
• Represent the customer within the product organization by bringing production context, business impact, operational constraints, and technical requirements into build and prioritization discussions.
• Own sophisticated escalations, balancing realistic customer expectations with accurate, reproducible technical evidence while advocating for outcomes that protect customer environments.
• Translate requirements, RCAs, and technical decisions between customer and engineering contexts without losing fidelity on either side.
• Lead the technical relationship on a named set of large and/or strategic SSE accounts, including critical issues end to end.
• Drive proactive account health by improving deployment and rollout planning, configuration and policy consistency.
• Build clean escalations for engineering—timeline, impact, repro, logs, pcaps, redacted configs—and translate outcomes back to the customer.
• Feed recurring customer patterns back into product and engineering roadmaps as concrete requirements.
• Build and support the CX-driven runbooks and documentation from lessons learned and for future SSE deployments.
• Use AI-assisted log analysis with strong judgment; don't ship unverified conclusions to either side.
• Script (Bash/Python) for diagnostics, health checks, automations, and lab reproduction.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field with 10+ years of professional experience in networking, security, or cloud infrastructure; or a Master's degree with 7+ years of experience.
• 7+ years in networking/security with direct customer ownership.
• Strong DNS, routing, IPsec tunnels, TLS, SAML, SWG/Web Proxy, and cloud networking experience.
• Experience across zero trust access, VPN, web inspection in the cloud, CASB, DLP, and firewall policy.
• 5+ years of experience with identity and SSO integrations (SAML/OIDC, SCIM) in enterprise deployments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience handling on-premises and cloud security/networking products in production customer environments.
• Demonstrated ability to influence customer expectations and recommend successful SaaS deployment and adoption strategies.
• Experience supporting large multinational enterprise accounts with global SSE or SASE rollouts.
• Ability to work effectively across time zones and cultures in a distributed engineering organization.
• Coding experience with Bash, Python, or similar.
• Packet capture/analysis (Wireshark/tcpdump or equivalent) and familiarity with DPI-related failure modes (decryption, certificate pinning, fragmentation, MTU).
• Ability to advocate for both viewpoints—customer urgency and engineering feasibility—without distorting either.
• Ability to communicate engineering updates to executive and technical customer audiences, and customer context to engineering.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution.
• Paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance.
• Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment for defined periods.
• 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.
• Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at 4.92 hours per pay period.
• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program with no defined limit (subject to business limitations).
• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, with up to 80 hours carried forward annually.
• Additional paid time away for critical or emergency family issues.
• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer.
• Annual bonuses for non-sales roles, subject to Cisco’s policies.

Pay

The starting salary range for this position is $186,900.00 to $267,700.00 for 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.

For sales roles, the ranges include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined. Employees may earn performance-based incentive pay, split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan.

State-specific salary ranges:

• New York City Metro Area: $186,900.00 - $307,800.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $166,300.00 - $274,100.00