New

Software Engineering Technical Leader

Cisco Systems, Inc.
$149,100.00 to $218,900.00
life insurance, vision insurance, parental leave, paid holidays, sick time, 401(k)
United States, Colorado, Boulder
Apr 26, 2026
The application window is expected to close on: Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received. Develops software consistent with Cisco 'Design Thinking Principles' with a focus on simplification and UX (User Experience) at its core, using secure coding practices, ensuring user privacy, and following software development best practices. Partners with other teams including design and product management to create the right solution for the customers. Creates technical design documentation to be used by the team as well as contributing to user documentation to be used by end users. Debugs and addresses software issues during development and in production systems to support customers. Brings new ideas for product innovation and helps improve software development processes. What You'll Do: * Uses specialized expertise in one or more areas to interpret internal or external business issues and recommends best practices. * Solves complex problems and takes abroad perspective to identify innovative solutions. May lead small-to-medium features from technical design through completion. * May lead projects that span multiple teams; manage workload and workstreams holistically. * Influences a defined software engineering roadmap. * May lead medium-to-large features from technical design through completion. * Provides expertise in the development and implementation of the software development lifecycle, and agile engineering strategies across applicable teams and partners. * Leads and mentors others and improves the technical design of solutions. Advocates for new features within a product to address customer needs. * Articulates design choices based on an expert understanding of market awareness, product adoption, and competition. * Innovates new products to address unmet customer needs * Influences and tracks metrics to measure success * Writes functional clean code and unit tests at a level that sets the standard for coding across teams. * Influences architectural decisions with a focus onsecurity, scalabilityy and reliability. * Contributes to threat modeling of a product. * Proactively identifies, prioritizes, and resolves risk and issues in production systems. * Designs and implements robust monitoring tools that provide visibility and reliability and acts on the data and alerts to increase future performance. * Leads postmortems and reviews root cause analysis, ensures on-call coverage. * Expert on multiple functional components * May contribute to knowledge sharing among the wider professional community with technical blogs or publications. * Scopes work accurately and provides reliable estimates for project milestones and completion. * Communicates delivery trade-offs and negotiates with cross-functional partners to align on direction and outcomes. * Mentors peers or others on the team * Facilitates/encourages knowledge sharing in the team Minimum Qualifications: Bachelors + 7 years of related experience, or Masters + 6 years of related experience, or PhD + 3 years of related experience. Requires in-depth conceptual and practical knowledge in data processing technologies and knowledge of related technical job families; has worked extensively with data processing or event-driven architecture Demonstrated experience of shipping and supporting cloud-native services or on-premises software solutions, using object-oriented programming languages like GoLang OR Java, C/C+. Experience leading the design and delivery of complex projects with a scope of 3 months or more, involving collaboration with multiple teams. Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction, drive consensus across multiple teams and stakeholders. Proven ability to design, architect, and implement distributed systems, focusing on reliability, scalability, and performance. Deep understanding of distributed system concepts (e.g., consistency models, fault tolerance, consensus algorithms). Experience with data processing technologies like kafka, Open Telemetry, Kubernetes or others Preferred Qualifications: Proven track recordof delivering high-quality, maintainable code with ability to adapt tonew technologies Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills withexpertisein Linux-based tools and advanced diagnostics Strong advocate for operational excellence, driving best practices for monitoring, alerting, and incident response Experience with data platforms, data ingestion, or similar enterprise-scale data processing technologies 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. Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: The starting salary range posted for this position is $149,100.00 to $218,900.00 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. 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 ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto 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: $183,800.00 - $303,100.00 Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $163,600.00 - $269,800.00 * 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.