Principal Engineer - Platform Engineering

About the Team

The Platform Engineering organization is responsible for building and operating the foundational cloud-native platforms that power engineering across Cisco Network Platform. Our team owns the Kubernetes ecosystem used by thousands of developers, spanning hundreds of clusters across public and on-premise environments. We provide the infrastructure, automation, observability, security, and self-service capabilities that enable product teams to build and operate services reliably at scale. We are a highly collaborative team of SREs, who enjoy solving complex distributed systems challenges. Our culture emphasizes ownership, operational excellence, automation, and continuous improvement.

Your Impact

Arcitect and drive the evolution of Kubernetes platform strategy across cloud and on-premises environments supporting mission-critical workloads at scale. Lead the design and implementation of platform capabilities that improve reliability, security, scalability, and developer productivity for hundreds of engineering teams. Partner with engineering, security, and product leaders to define multi-year platform roadmaps and drive execution of company-critical initiatives. Provide technical leadership during major incidents, architecture reviews, platform transformations, and strategic infrastructure investments. Mentor senior engineers and help raise the engineering bar through technical leadership, design reviews, operational excellence, and architectural guidance.

Minimum Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production environments.
• 7+ years of hands-on experience operating Kubernetes platforms in production, including multi-cluster environments.
• Experience architecting and operating cloud-native infrastructure across AWS, Azure, GCP, or hybrid cloud environments.
• Experience designing, operating, and troubleshooting networking architectures for large-scale Kubernetes platforms, including CNI implementations, ingress and egress traffic management, service-to-service communication, multi-cluster connectivity, and network observability.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and GitOps technologies, including Terraform and ArgoCD or equivalent platforms.
• Strong communication and leadership skills with the ability to effectively influence engineers, architects, senior leaders, and executive stakeholders.
• Proven track record leading cross-organizational platform initiatives and influencing technical strategy across multiple engineering teams.
• Experience implementing SRE practices, including SLOs, incident management, production readiness reviews, and operational excellence programs.
• Strong software engineering experience with Go, Python, or similar programming languages used for automation and platform development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with migrating monolithic applications to a microservices architecture.
• Knowledge of networking (i.e. switching, routing, wifi, IoT).

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.

Message to Applicants

For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

Compensation

The starting salary range posted for this position is $231,400.00 to $331,800.00 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.

Benefits

• 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.
• Grants of Cisco restricted stock units.
• 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.
• Up to 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer.
• Annual bonuses for non-sales roles.
• Performance-based incentive pay for quota-based sales roles.
• Flexible vacation time off program for exempt employees.
• Up to 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.