Software Engineering Technical Leader (Identity Engineering - SSO)

About the Team

Cisco’s Identity Engineering organization is building a unified foundation for connecting, managing, and securing identity across Cisco products and diverse enterprise identity systems. The platform will support identity lifecycle management and consistent security enforcement for workforce users, service identities, and emerging AI agents. You will join the squad responsible for the platform’s core SSO and identity-brokering capabilities. The team works on authentication, federation, and identity orchestration across heterogeneous systems, solving complex distributed-systems and cross-product integration challenges.

Your Impact

In this hands-on individual-contributor role, you will set the technical direction for the authentication and federation foundation of Cisco’s identity platform. Key responsibilities include:

• Architecture & Technical Strategy: Own the architecture and technical direction for core SSO and identity-broker capabilities. Make complex decisions involving security, scalability, performance, extensibility, and long-term platform evolution.
• Identity Platform Engineering & SSO: Lead the design and development of secure, scalable SSO services, identity-broker capabilities, and APIs using Python. Establish durable patterns for authentication, federation, identity orchestration, and integration across Cisco products and heterogeneous identity systems.
• Spec-Driven Execution: Turn ambiguous business and technical needs into clear specifications, architectural designs, acceptance criteria, and executable plans. Document consequential decisions through Architecture Decision Records and ensure implementation remains aligned with the intended architecture.
• AI-Native Development: Establish effective practices for using AI-assisted development throughout the software development lifecycle. Apply strong engineering judgment to ensure AI-assisted work meets expectations for security, correctness, maintainability, and quality.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Serve as a technical bridge among engineering squads, product management, and platform architecture teams. Communicate tradeoffs, build alignment, and guide cross-team initiatives from early design through delivery.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Raise engineering standards through design reviews, code reviews, technical guidance, and mentorship. Help engineers navigate complex problems and develop stronger skills in architecture, identity, and distributed systems.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of related experience, master’s degree with 6+ years of related experience, or PhD with 3+ years of related experience.
• Experience providing technical leadership for the design and delivery of distributed systems, microservices, or enterprise cloud services.
• Professional experience building backend services and APIs using Python, including asynchronous programming patterns.
• Experience designing or building identity, authentication, authorization, or security capabilities.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools to deliver software while maintaining strong standards for security, correctness, and maintainability.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading complex software initiatives across multiple engineering or product teams.
• Deep knowledge of identity and federation protocols such as SAML, OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, SCIM, or WS-Federation.
• Experience building REST APIs using OpenAPI specifications and related code-generation workflows.
• Experience with AWS, SQL, Redis, or event-driven architectures.
• Experience with React and TypeScript.
• Experience leading spec-driven development, writing Architecture Decision Records, and establishing software design standards.

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.