Senior Director, Engineering - Quality (Security Business Group)

About the role

Cisco Security is seeking a Senior Director of Quality Engineering to lead the quality strategy and operations for our Cloud and Network Security product portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Create a unified quality engineering vision that empowers Cisco Security teams to ship faster with greater confidence.
• Define and implement an enterprise-quality strategy for Cloud and Network Security products, aligned with business priorities, customer outcomes, and Cisco’s security standards.
• Establish a common quality engineering framework spanning development, testing, release readiness, reliability, performance, security validation, and customer experience.
• Lead and grow a high-performing global Quality Engineering organization, developing leaders and fostering a culture of accountability, automation, and continuous improvement.
• Partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, Security, SRE, Support, and Customer Experience teams to embed quality early in the product lifecycle.
• Drive a shift from traditional testing toward modern quality engineering practices, including automated validation, risk-based testing, observability, continuous delivery, and measurable quality outcomes.
• Create consistent release governance and readiness mechanisms for complex cloud and network security offerings.
• Define quality metrics, dashboards, and executive reporting that connect engineering health to customer impact, reliability, and business performance.
• Lead cross-portfolio initiatives to improve defect prevention, scalability, interoperability, performance, resilience, and security assurance.
• Advocate for customer-first quality standards, using field insights, support trends, and telemetry to prioritize improvements.
• Influence architecture and engineering decisions to ensure products are designed for testability, operability, security, and reliability.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree or 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, quality engineering, reliability engineering, or related technical leadership roles.
• 7+ years of experience leading large, distributed engineering or quality organizations defining quality strategy for cloud-native, SaaS, networking, cybersecurity, or enterprise software products.
• Proven experience with CI/CD, automated testing, test infrastructure, API and UI validation, performance engineering, chaos/resilience testing or production observability.
• Experience with cloud platforms, distributed systems, networking, and security technologies (e.g., firewalls, SASE).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with network security, firewall, SASE, zero trust, identity, cloud security, or threat detection products.
• Experience operating in a large, global technology organization.
• Demonstrated ability to establish scalable operating models and quality frameworks across multiple product teams.
• Proven success influencing senior executives and aligning diverse organizations around shared quality and delivery outcomes.
• Familiarity with secure software development lifecycle (SDLC) practices and compliance-driven quality requirements.
• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; an advanced degree is preferred.

Benefits

At Cisco, we offer competitive compensation packages, including a starting salary range of $293,900.00 to $406,800.00, subject to location and individual performance. Additional benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. For quota-based sales roles, the ranges provided include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined. Employees in Illinois will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.