Software Engineering Technical Leader -- Secure Workload Agent

Isovalent, now part of Cisco, was founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF and is building the next generation of cloud-native networking and security technologies. Within Cisco Security, the Secure Workload engineering team develops the Unified Agent that provides runtime visibility, workload protection, and policy enforcement across physical servers, virtual machines, cloud infrastructure, and containerized environments.

About the role

As a Software Engineering Technical Leader, you will design, develop, and optimize the Secure Workload Unified Agent across multiple operating systems and hardware architectures. You will work on low-level systems software, kernel interactions, and platform enablement to ensure the agent delivers high performance, reliability, and security across a broad range of enterprise environments. Success in this role comes from independently delivering complex engineering projects, maintaining high software quality, and helping extend the Unified Agent to new enterprise platforms while mentoring other engineers on the team.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize low-level software components for the Secure Workload Unified Agent using C, with a focus on operating system and kernel-level functionality.
• Develop and maintain support for enterprise operating systems and architectures including Linux, IBM AIX, IBM Power, IBM System z, Solaris, and other supported platforms.
• Diagnose complex software issues using crash dump and core dump analysis, debugging tools, and operating system internals to improve product reliability and performance.
• Collaborate with engineers across Secure Workload, Tetragon, and Isovalent to deliver runtime security capabilities and platform enhancements for enterprise customers.
• Mentor junior engineers through technical guidance, design discussions, and code reviews while driving engineering excellence across the team.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree with 12+ years of related experience, or Master’s degree with 8+ years of related experience, or PhD with 5+ years of related experience.
• Experience developing software in C for Linux or UNIX-based operating systems.
• Experience with operating system internals, kernel programming, or kernel driver development.
• Experience with compilers, cross-platform compilation, and debugging techniques including crash dump or core dump analysis.
• Experience developing software for enterprise operating systems or multiple processor architectures.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing software for IBM AIX.
• Experience developing software for IBM Power (PowerPC) and/or IBM System z (s390x) architectures.
• Experience developing software for Solaris or other UNIX operating systems.
• Experience developing host-based security, endpoint, networking, or systems software that interacts with operating system kernels.
• Experience mentoring software engineers and leading technical design or implementation efforts across complex engineering projects.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution.
• Paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance.
• Grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
• 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, and 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, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use.
• 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.
• Eligibility to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies (for non-sales roles).
• For sales roles, performance-based incentive pay on top of base salary, split between quota and non-quota components.

Pay

The starting salary range for this position is $214,100.00 to $309,800.00 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 by location:

• New York City Metro Area: $214,100.00 - $356,300.00
• Non-Metro New York State & Washington State: $192,400.00 - $317,200.00

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