Senior Software Engineer

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Our Incident Command Software Engineering team is a diverse and hardworking group of individuals that share a passion for both developing sophisticated software and computer security. We are driven to stay one step ahead of the constantly evolving threat landscape, and we have fun while doing it! Our methodology uses an AI-based, fast paced, Agile development environment. We combine the simplicity of Kanban and the power of continuous integration and deployment, combined with AI to accelerate our high quality software delivery. We collaborate with vendors, partners, and industry leaders to incorporate the latest digital analytic techniques into our product.

Become part of Cisco's fast growing and exciting Internet Security team. We are actively building next-generation security services crafted to detect and respond to security events.

We are searching for a Software Engineer to join a team building and extending our next-generation incident detection and response services.

You will work closely with Cisco's internal security investigation and analysis teams to design work flows, systems, and processes that deliver reliable, scalable, and effective security services.

• You should be highly qualified in designing and engineering software solutions to securely meet the demand of our security team.
• You also should have the ability and desire to learn internet security from, and with, a team of experts.

• Apply AI tools in software engineering, test, and delivered solutions as needed to meet business goals, while evaluating AI-generated code for correctness, security, maintainability, and fit with the codebase.
• Lead medium features and projects from technical design through completion, including delegation, review, delivery tracking, production readiness, and ongoing support.
• Work independently with minimal guidance to determine the best technical approach for ambiguous engineering problems, stakeholder needs, and security operations priorities.
• Translate internal security operations needs into secure, maintainable software designs, APIs, automations, no-code or low-code workflows, and services that improve reliability and stakeholder outcomes.
• Create, troubleshoot, and manage data pipelines that move, transform, enrich, and supply data for incident detection, response, automation, reporting, and operational decision-making.
• Develop clean, tested software consistent with Cisco Design Thinking Principles, secure coding practices, privacy expectations, and team engineering standards.
• Write functional code and unit tests without guidance, enabling scale, reliability, and velocity in product releases.
• Perform thorough code reviews that identify immediate and larger-scope issues, improve maintainability, and strengthen secure development practices.
• Contribute to feature-level threat modeling and make practical security, reliability, scalability, and delivery trade-offs.
• Prototype and deliver automation, tooling, low-code/no-code capabilities, integrations, and service improvements that strengthen detection, prevention, response, and security operations capabilities.
• Identify and recommend improvements to the software development lifecycle, agile engineering practices, CI/CD, testing, observability, and operational support models.
• Collaborate with domain experts in Incident Command and across Cisco to enhance, improve, or modify security methods in both on-prem and cloud environments.
• Identify opportunities for multiple products, services, data sources, or workflow platforms to work together to create value for stakeholders.
• Monitor and improve production application environments, including problem identification, troubleshooting, escalation, and timely resolution of reliability and availability issues.
• Serve as an escalation point for production and on-call issues as needed; lead postmortems and write root cause analysis for significant incidents.
• Coordinate across teams on estimates, timelines, specifications, dependencies, blockers, and trade-offs; track milestones, communicate progress, and provide remediation plans when needed.
• Serve as an expert on multiple functional components, sharing knowledge across teams through documentation, code reviews, design discussions, demos, presentations, or other forums.
• Mentor peers and more junior engineers through technical guidance, code reviews, documentation, and practical coaching.

• Typically 7 or more years of related software engineering experience, or equivalent experience through advanced degree, technical depth, or demonstrated impact.
• Experience writing software in one or more languages such as Python, Go, Java, or similar in a Linux or Unix-based environment.
• Demonstrated experience using AI coding generators responsibly, including the ability to evaluate and review generated code, identify problems, and show a deep understanding of the relevant codebase.
• Experience applying AI technologies to solutions that meet stakeholder, operational, or customer needs.
• Expertise with no-code or low-code systems such as Corteza, including designing workflows, configuring applications, troubleshooting issues, and integrating them with surrounding systems.
• Ability to create, troubleshoot, and manage data pipelines that support operational analytics, automation, reporting, or security workflows.
• Strong secure development practices, including secure coding principles, code review, privacy awareness, and feature-level threat modeling.
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs, services, integrations, automation, full-stack capabilities, or low-code/no-code extensions.
• Experience with CI/CD, containerized builds and deployments, and orchestration platforms such as Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, or similar technologies.
• Comfortable developing solutions that efficiently use, move, transform, and supply large amounts of data in support of security operations.
• Experience troubleshooting production services, improving reliability, participating in or supporting on-call rotations, and leading postmortems or root cause analysis.
• Ability to work independently with minimal guidance, clarify ambiguous requirements, identify paths around blockers, and communicate status, risks, remediation plans, and trade-offs clearly.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders, understand project or department needs, and deliver high-quality engineering outcomes across team boundaries.
• Ability to mentor peers and more junior engineers, raise engineering quality, and share knowledge across teams through code reviews, documentation, and technical guidance.

• Experience in security operations, incident detection and response, detection engineering, threat analysis, or adjacent cybersecurity domains.
• Experience building cloud-native services, operational tooling, workflow applications, or low-code/no-code platforms in hybrid, on-prem, or cloud environments.
• Experience with observability, monitoring, alerting, and reliability practices for production services.
• Experience with data pipelines, event-driven architectures, stream processing, ETL workflows, or large-scale security analytics.
• Familiarity with Agile software delivery, Kanban, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and modern engineering workflows.

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. 

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

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. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks.  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 eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 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 determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 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 participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has 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, and 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

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* 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.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.