Staff Software Engineer

About the role

This role involves owning features end-to-end across the complete software development lifecycle including AI, translating customer and business needs into clear technical solutions, designing, building, and maintaining highly scalable, distributed systems, identifying and resolving pre-production bottlenecks and production issues, participating in design and code reviews, partnering closely with product managers, SREs, and cross-functional teams, participating in a rotating on-call schedule, and mentoring junior engineers.

Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end across the complete software development lifecycle including AI
• Translate customer and business needs into clear technical solutions
• Design, build, and maintain highly scalable, distributed systems
• Identify and resolve pre-production bottlenecks and production issues
• Participate in design and code reviews
• Partner closely with product managers, SREs, and cross-functional teams
• Participate in a rotating on-call schedule
• Mentor junior engineers

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of professional experience in software engineering and proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Python, or Java
• 5+ years of experience in the design and implementation of distributed systems, including databases, distributed file systems, concurrency control, consistency models with API communication paradigms, including REST

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience with CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, container ecosystems, and microservices-based architectures
• 3+ years of experience working with public cloud providers, such as AWS, GCP, or Azure
• 5+ years of experience with debugging, troubleshooting, and the use of observability and diagnostic tools
• Experience developing or deploying applications using LLMs, RAG pipelines, MCP, and multi-agent frameworks

Skills

• Effective communication skills and the ability to collaborate across teams and disciplines
• A strong ownership mindset, with a proactive approach to identifying problems and driving solutions
• Drive and resilience when working through complex, ambiguous, or high impact challenges
• Goal orientation, with the ability to turn high-level objectives into measurable outcomes
• Openness to change and experimentation, including curiosity and passion around AI-assisted development, automation, and operational tooling

Benefits

At Cisco, employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time. U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which 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. Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members. For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

Pay

The starting salary range posted for this position is $163,600.00 to $234,600.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in 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.

Schedule

Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time. U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which 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. Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members. For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.