Software Engineer Lead–Cloud Security & AI

About the role

This is a hybrid position requiring two days per week onsite at Cisco’s RTP, NC office, or for those based in San Jose, CA, occasional presence at the San Jose office as needed.

Meet the Team: Cisco's Cloud Security Engineering team within the Security & Trust Organization designs, builds, and operates cloud security solutions to secure Cisco's public cloud estate — AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI. We partner with security engineering, IT, and cloud operations teams as well as internal business units to enforce secure cloud practices and scale innovative solutions. We're actively building the next generation of cloud security: AI-enabled, agentic remediation workflows that turn security outcomes into automated, developer-friendly action.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement AI-driven automation frameworks that detect and remediate cloud security misconfigurations at scale — delivering fixes directly into cloud environments or developer workflows via automated PRs
• Lead end-to-end technical execution of a focused workstream, contributing hands-on while guiding 2–3 engineers to deliver against key milestones
• Define and drive the engineering roadmap for your workstream — covering SDLC best practices, CI/CD, observability, business metrics, and AI-assisted development
• Build reusable, well-documented internal tooling and services that scale across cloud platforms and engineering teams
• Scope work accurately, communicate delivery trade-offs, and align multi-functional partners on direction and outcomes
• Mentor peers and set the standard for software quality through code reviews, design sessions, and knowledge sharing

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of engineering experience
• Experience in Python development, building backend services and APIs, including data modeling and relational/NoSQL data stores
• Experience building or integrating AI/LLM-based or agentic workflows into production systems using managed platforms such as AWS Bedrock Agent, Azure AI Foundry, Google Vertex AI, or equivalent
• Experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, Azure) including SDKs, APIs, and cloud-native service architectures
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines to automate builds, tests, and deployments across environments
• Experience with cloud native event-driven architectures and container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, ECS, or equivalent)

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong communication skills with the ability to present to both technical and business audiences with clarity and brevity
• Experience using orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph, Strands Agents, Semantic Kernel, OpenAI Agents SDK, or equivalent
• Experience delivering internal services or tooling consumed broadly by engineering teams within a large organization
• Cloud security experience - familiarity with any of the following: cloud security controls, policy-as-code, ASPM or CSPM tools
• Infrastructure as Code experience (Terraform or equivalent)

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
• 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 receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, with no defined limit on vacation time (subject to availability and 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 annually
• 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
• Eligibility to earn annual bonuses (for non-sales roles) or performance-based incentive pay (for sales roles), subject to Cisco’s policies
• Eligibility to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment

Pay

The starting salary range for this position is $151,600.00 to $222,400.00 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.

Full salary ranges for specific locations:

• New York City Metro Area: $186,900.00 - $307,800.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $166,300.00 - $274,100.00

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