Systems Engineer

Forward Deployed EngineerCisco Security Business Group (SBG) is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer in a customer-facing role that focuses on technical leadership, two-way advocacy, and expertise across our Security Service Edge (SSE) portfolio.This role combines deep SWG/SSE, networking and security expertise with the opportunity to influence product direction, solve critically important customer challenges, and serve as the technical link between product, engineering and our most strategic enterprise customers.Cisco SSE offers a comprehensive end-to-end zero trust access security portfolio including VPN, zero trust access, web inspection in the cloud, firewall as a service, CASB, DLP and more. Cisco SSE deployment flexibility allows customers to select solutions tailored to their needs and transition seamlessly as requirements evolve.You work globally across regions and time zones in support of our largest and most strategic SSE customers, coordinating with globally distributed engineering teams! Expect participation in a follow-the-sun escalation model and significant travel to customer sites and engineering hubs.Your ImpactServe as the technical liaison between Cisco SSE product management and engineering and our largest, most strategic enterprise SSE customers! Represent the product organization to customers by clearly recommending deployment best practices, issue findings, root causes, workarounds, product constraints, and delivery timelines. Represent the customer within the product organization by bringing production context, business impact, operational constraints, and technical requirements into build and prioritization discussions. Own sophisticated escalations, balancing realistic customer expectations with accurate, reproducible technical evidence while advocating for outcomes that protect customer environments. Translate requirements, RCAs, and technical decisions between customer and engineering contexts without losing fidelity on either side.Key Responsibilities:Lead the technical relationship on a named set of large and/or strategic SSE accounts, including critical issues end to end.Drive proactive account health by improving deployment and rollout planning, configuration and policy consistency.Build clean escalations for engineering - timeline, impact, repro, logs, pcaps, redacted configs - and translate outcomes back to the customer.Feed recurring customer patterns back into product and engineering roadmaps as concrete requirements.Build and support the CX-driven runbooks and documentation from lessons learned and for future SSE deployments.Script (Bash/Python) for diagnostics, health checks, automations, and lab reproduction.Minimum QualificationsBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field with 10+ years of professional experience in networking, security, or cloud infrastructure; or a Master's degree with 7+ years of experience.7+ years in networking/security with direct customer ownership.Experience with DNS, routing, IPsec tunnels, TLS, SAML, SWG/Web Proxy, and cloud networking.Experience across zero trust access, VPN, web inspection in the cloud, CASB, DLP, and firewall policy.5+ years of experience with identity and SSO integrations (SAML/OIDC, SCIM) in enterprise deployments.Preferred QualificationsPrior experience handling on-premises and cloud security/networking products in production customer environments.Demonstrated ability to influence customer expectations and recommend successful SaaS deployment and adoption strategies.Experience supporting large multinational enterprise accounts with global SSE or SASE rollouts.Ability to work effectively across time zones and cultures in a distributed engineering organization.Coding experience with Bash, Python, or similar.Ability to advocate for both viewpoints—customer urgency and engineering feasibility—without distorting either.Ability to communicate engineering updates to executive and technical customer audiences, and customer context to engineering.