Senior Software Engineering Manager - DPU & AI Cloud Infrastructure

About the Role

Cisco is building next-generation infrastructure software for enterprise AI factories, neocloud providers, sovereign cloud environments, and modern data center fabrics. These platforms must turn complex GPU, server, network, security, and DPU-enabled infrastructure into secure, multi-tenant AI infrastructure services that are simple to deploy, operate, observe, and scale.

We are seeking a hands-on Senior Software Engineering Manager to lead a team working at the intersection of systems software, Linux networking, DPU and SmartNIC acceleration, distributed security, infrastructure orchestration, observability, and production operations. You will stay close to architecture, prototypes, technical risk retirement, design reviews, debugging, and quality decisions while hiring, coaching, and growing a strong engineering team. You should be comfortable moving between strategy and code-level detail, between customer outcomes and low-level systems behavior, and between innovation exploration and disciplined production execution.

This is a Hybrid position located in Milpitas, CA. Ideally 3 days per week in office.

Your Impact

• Shape the architecture and engineering direction for AI cloud infrastructure and DPU-enabled networking capabilities
• Lead a team responsible for core infrastructure software that makes high-performance AI cloud environments deployable, secure, observable, and supportable
• Participate directly in architecture reviews, design deep dives, prototype reviews, code reviews, debugging, and technical decision-making
• Drive platform capabilities across infrastructure lifecycle, host networking, tenant isolation, policy enforcement, service integration, health, telemetry, and operational workflows
• Evaluate emerging technologies, retire high-risk assumptions early, and guide pragmatic paths from prototype to production
• Make strong technical tradeoffs across performance, reliability, security, portability, cost, debuggability, and operational simplicity
• Build repeatable engineering practices for validation, automation, rollout, diagnostics, upgrade safety, and production readiness
• Build a climate of innovation where engineers simplify complex systems, question inherited assumptions, and turn hard infrastructure problems into reusable platform capabilities
• Hire, lead, mentor, and retain a high-performing team of technical leads, senior software engineers, and systems engineers
• Partner across engineering, product, hardware, firmware, security, operations, and customer-facing teams to deliver coherent platform outcomes

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree + 15, or Master's + 12 years of related experience with C/C++, Python, Go
• 5+ years of supervisory or management experience leading software engineering teams with consistent record delivering complex production software across multiple teams, functions, or product areas
• Experience running engineering teams in networking, systems software, distributed systems, security platforms, infrastructure software, or hardware-accelerated platforms
• Strong technical credibility, including the ability to participate in architecture, design, debugging, and implementation tradeoffs
• Experience leading ambiguous early-stage technical efforts from exploration through production readiness
• Deep understanding of Linux systems, host networking, packet processing, routing, policy enforcement, virtualization, containers, and production debugging
• Experience with distributed control planes, configuration systems, lifecycle management, and recovery behavior
• Familiarity with DPU, SmartNIC, NIC offload, NPU, ASIC, or hardware-accelerated networking architectures
• Experience with CI/CD, test automation, observability, performance analysis, health checks, upgrade safety, rollback strategy, and production support
• Strong understanding of secure development practices and security architecture for distributed infrastructure systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with DPU or SmartNIC platforms, programmable packet processing, kernel bypass, hardware offload, or high-performance networking
• Experience with packet-processing and networking technologies such as VPP, DPDK, OVS, eBPF/XDP, tc, SR-IOV, VF/PF, P4 or P4-like pipelines, Kubernetes networking, CNI, routing, or virtual networking
• Experience designing or working with network abstraction interfaces, hardware abstraction layers, SAI-like APIs, SDK abstraction layers, or portable control-plane/data-plane interfaces
• Experience building or operating host networking platforms, cloud networking services, network security systems, SDN platforms, service meshes, or infrastructure orchestration platforms
• Understanding of AI/HPC cluster networking behavior, including RDMA/RoCE, congestion management, telemetry, failure diagnosis, and performance isolation
• Experience leading teams where the work required prototyping, technical discovery, architecture choices, and production delivery
• Automation or AI-assisted tooling to improve engineering velocity, quality, debugging, and operational readiness

Pay

The starting salary range for this position is $210,600.00 to $305,100.00 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 specific locations:

• New York City Metro Area: $210,600.00 - $350,800.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $189,300.00 - $312,200.00

Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time. For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco's policies.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision insurance
• 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
• Paid parental leave
• Short and long-term disability coverage
• Basic life insurance
• 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 determined by Cisco
• Non-exempt employees: 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
• Exempt employees: flexible vacation time off program with no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some 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 from one calendar year to the next
• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

Schedule

Hybrid position located in Milpitas, CA. Ideally 3 days per week in office.