Software Engineering Technical Lead

We are looking for candidates local to San Jose as this is a hybrid role expecting to be in the office at least 3 days per week.

Meet the Team

The Cisco Distributed System Engineering (DSE) group is at the forefront of developing products that power the largest networks in the world. The networking industry is going through a massive transformation to build the next generation infrastructure to meet the needs of AI/ML workloads and continuously increasing internet users and application. We are uniquely positioned to capture that market transition. This team builds products by harnessing the potential of open-source technologies while pushing the boundaries on Systems and Silicon Architecture.

This solutions team collaborates directly with large webscaler customers to replicate their networks and prepare software and hardware before deployment. With a broad range of expertise and strong communication skills, the team works on short sprints across Cisco's product lineup, focusing on SONiC for web-scale environments, including AIML, routers, and switches.

Your Impact

As a Technical Leader, you'll be part of an agile team engaged in the design, development and execution of tests to qualify network performance for AI/ML capability. You will be a part of our solutions team which works in a fast-paced environment and be responsible for end-to-end product testing and production support.

In this role you will leverage your strong Python automation skills for scripting and testing, with some opportunities for development work. You will work with automation frameworks like PyTest to automate and streamline the testing process. You will be expected to both learn from and make contributions to the open-source community to drive innovative solutions in this space. Other responsibilities will include…

• Leading discussions with customers and gathering technical requirements
• Building out testing environments for system/solution validation
• Developing and enhancing test frameworks and benchmarking tools
• Defining and gathering data for network performance benchmarking
• Troubleshooting customer issues
• Leading projects and mentoring other team members

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s in STEM with 8+ years of relevant experience or Master’s in STEM with 6+ years of relevant experience or PhD in STEM with 3+ years of relevant experience.
• 5+ years of experience writing automation with Python
• 3+ years of experience configuring, testing or debugging networking systems and solutions
• Experience with PyTest or similar open-source QA automation frameworks

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working with test frameworks, traffic generators (commercial & open source) including examples…
• Previous experience in a customer facing environment
• Previous experience leading teams
• Exposure network operating systems, preferably SONiC
• Knowledge of control & data plane technologies including L2, L3, VXLAN, segment Routing and/or MPLS
• Exposure to RDMA, HPC networks
• Knowledge of RoCE and Infini band protocols

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. Simply put – we power the future.

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.