Principal Engineer - Isovalent Secure Workload Observability (remote)

This position is remote within the U.S., with a strong preference for candidates in the greater San Jose, CA metro area who can attend meetings at the office as needed.

About the Team

Isovalent, now part of Cisco, is the company founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF. Cisco Secure Workload is a flagship security product offering workload protection, micro-segmentation, and is part of the Hybrid Mesh Firewall solution. Cisco Isovalent and Cisco Secure Workload are together building the next generation of products for securing workloads and AI infrastructure.

We believe in fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace where every team member feels valued, respected, and empowered. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply and join us in our mission to deliver exceptional products and services.

Your Impact

We are a highly dynamic engineering organization building software for workload security products that cater to highly complex and scalable customer environments, protecting their crown jewel application workloads from increasingly complex threat vectors.

As a Principal Engineer with our Backend Services team, you will work with and provide technical leadership to a team of highly motivated engineers. Your focus will be on improving scale, performance, reliability, robustness, and—most importantly—security for solutions deployed to our customers.

Responsibilities

• Act as a subject-matter expert (SME), advising on technical vision, roadmaps, and leadership.
• Make architectural contributions to backend services that:
  • Collect and process telemetry at scale from data sources in customer environments.
  • React to changes in environment and render policies in a highly scalable manner to a large number of enforcement points.
  • Implement API endpoints that respond with minimal latencies even when processing large volumes of data.
  • Are deployed in highly complex distributed system environments, addressing unique failure modes.

Requirements

• At least 10+ years of experience building software systems in one or more programming languages such as Go, C++, or Java.
• At least 5+ years in a technical leadership role in a software engineering environment.
• Master’s + 10 years of related experience, or Bachelor’s + 12 years of related experience, or PhD + 5 years of related experience (or equivalent work experience). Degree must be in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Agile experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proficiency in Computer Science foundational areas, including algorithms, systems, databases, performance engineering, and security architecture.
• Proficiency with Golang.
• Schema/data modeling design experience.
• Experience with large-scale event processing architectures.
• Experience in systems programming and performance engineering.
• Experience working with security architecture and database design.
• Kubernetes experience.
• Experience programming using cloud APIs for AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Technical leadership in agile methodologies, involving rapid prototyping based on feedback from customers, peers, technical solution architects, customer enablement engineers, and support engineers.
• Enjoyment in architecting, designing, analyzing, and brainstorming solutions that improve the product and produce customer-facing capabilities.

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 physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across their entire digital footprint. Fueled by our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. With a worldwide network of doers and experts, 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 $250,600.00 to $362,600.00 for new hires in U.S. and/or Canada locations (excluding 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.

Full salary ranges for specific locations:

• New York City Metro Area: $250,600.00 - $416,900.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $241,400.00 - $371,000.00

For quota-based sales roles, the ranges include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

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.
• Eligibility for grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment.
• Paid time off:
  • 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.
  • Non-exempt employees: 16 days of paid vacation per full calendar year (accrued at 4.92 hours per pay period).
  • Exempt employees: Flexible vacation time off 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 of unused sick time carried forward.
  • 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).
• For sales roles: Performance-based incentive pay split between quota and non-quota components.
  • Quota-based incentive pay:
    • 0.75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota.
    • 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%.
    • 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%.
    • Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap.
  • Non-quota-based sales performance elements: 0% up to 125% of target.

Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.