Leader, Software Engineering (Hybrid)

About the role

The CollabAI Platform team builds the shared infrastructure that powers AI capabilities across Webex, including LLM access, guardrails, model routing across OpenAI / Azure Foundry / AWS Bedrock, and the services that CollabAI product teams and downstream Webex features depend on. We operate at the intersection of AI infrastructure, cloud platform engineering, and security/compliance, ensuring every AI-powered feature has a reliable, cost-efficient, and compliant path to production, including in regulated environments like FedRAMP. We partner closely with product engineering, SRE, security, and hyperscaler partners to deliver a platform that lets the rest of the organization move fast without compromising on safety, quality, or cost.

Your Impact

You will lead the CollabAI Platform engineering team through the full design, development, and rollout lifecycle of foundational AI platform services as the team transitions to a broader scope of ownership. You will drive platform posture across multiple AI compliance programs, partnering with security and pen-test teams on scoped assessments and remediation. You will establish rigorous engineering standards for design reviews, security, observability, and quality, such as load/latency SLAs and incident response for platform-impacting events. You will manage cross-team commitments and trade-offs, aligning platform roadmap and resource allocation with product priorities across CollabAI, Meetings, Messaging, and Contact Center. You will partner cross-functionally with product management, SRE, security/compliance, hyperscaler account teams (AWS, Azure, OpenAI), and consuming product teams to translate stakeholder needs into platform decisions. You will optimize platform architecture and workflows to improve development velocity, reduce cost per inference, and ensure the platform scales with growing AI adoption across the business unit.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field with 15+ years of relevant experience, or Master’s degree with 12+ years.
• Minimum of 4 years of direct supervisory or management experience leading software or platform engineering teams.
• Experience directing platform, infrastructure, or shared-services engineering supporting multiple downstream product teams.
• Experience leading large-scale, complex platform initiatives from technical requirements through production deployment.
• Experience defining and implementing technical standards for design, security, and testing in cloud-based environments (FedRAMP, PCI-DSS, or comparable regulated environments strongly preferred).

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on familiarity with AI/ML platform concerns such as LLM inference, model routing, cost and capacity management across hyperscalers (AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI/Foundry, OpenAI).
• Strong leadership presence with a track record of mentoring senior engineers and building high-performing platform teams.
• Excellent communication skills, including presenting platform strategy, compliance posture, and technical trade-offs to executive stakeholders and partner teams.
• Demonstrated ability to build consensus across service owners, product, SRE, and security/compliance stakeholders.
• Strategic mindset focused on continuous improvement: identifying architectural, tooling, and process efficiencies that compound across the organization.
• Experience with Agile or similar methodologies in a fast-paced, global engineering environment.

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 in U.S. and/or Canada locations is $177,600.00 to $257,400.00, 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:

• New York City Metro Area: $214,100.00 – $356,300.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $192,400.00 – $317,200.00

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) plan with Cisco matching contribution
• Paid parental leave
• Short- and long-term disability coverage
• Basic life insurance
• Paid time away: 10 paid holidays per year, 1 floating holiday, 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness
• Non-exempt employees: 16 days of paid vacation accrued at 4.92 hours per pay period
• Exempt employees: flexible vacation time off program with no defined limit
• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1 thereafter; up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward
• Optional 10 paid volunteer days per year
• Annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies (for non-sales roles)