Senior Software Engineer (Remote)

The application window is expected to close on: 11/29/2026

This is a remote position open to candidates located within the United States.

Candidates located in the Bay area are requested to work onsite a few days a week.

Meet the Team

Isovalent, now part of Cisco, is the company founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF. Cisco Isovalent is building the next generation of products for securing workloads and AI infrastructure using advanced technologies across Linux and Windows.

Our software agent team builds high-performance, secure, and lightweight software agents that run across Linux, Unix, and Windows environments and multiple architectures, including aarch64, x86_64, s390x, and ppc64_le. These agents operate across traditional and modern workloads in on-premises and cloud environments.

You will work closely with software engineers and cross-functional teams that include data engineers, data scientists, and UX/UI engineers. The software you develop helps provide visibility, security, and management across data center, enterprise, container, and cloud environments at significant scale.

Your Impact

As a Senior Software Engineer on the software agent team, you will be closely involved throughout the product development lifecycle, from analyzing and designing new capabilities through implementation, troubleshooting, and deployment into production environments.

You will develop and improve software agents that collect rich workload information, including network traffic and system activity such as processes, users, and file access. You will help build capabilities that enforce network policies from a central controller and monitor and protect container-based deployments.

You will apply your knowledge of computer science, operating systems, systems programming, and networking to analyze complex interactions between applications, processes, and operating system kernels. You will work in an agile development environment, rapidly prototyping and improving features based on feedback from customers, peers, and technical support engineers.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, test, and improve high-performance software agents.
• Develop software that operates across Linux, Unix, and Windows environments and multiple processor architectures.
• Develop and enhance functionality for enforcing network policies on workloads from a central controller.
• Build capabilities that monitor and protect container-based deployments.
• Analyze complex software systems involving interactions between multiple processes and operating system kernels.
• Collaborate with software engineers, data engineers, data scientists, UX/UI engineers, technical support engineers, and other cross-functional partners.
• Participate throughout the product development lifecycle, from design and rapid prototyping through production deployment and ongoing improvement.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree with 5+ years of software development experience, or a Master's degree with 4+ years of software development experience
• Experience with systems programming using C or C++, including multi-threaded and multi-process application development.
• Experience operating system fundamentals, including threads, processes, file systems, networking, and inter-process communication.
• Experience debugging and troubleshooting complex software systems.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Windows systems programming.
• Experience with networking technologies and concepts.
• Experience with host-based firewalls.
• Experience with crash dump analysis.
• Experience programming in Golang.
• Experience developing software that interacts with operating system kernels or other low-level system components.
• Experience developing software for containerized, cloud, or distributed computing environments.

#LI-RN1

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 $167,700.00 to $245,200.00 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 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:

• 0.75% 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:

$167,700.00 - $282,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$149,100.00 - $250,900.00

* 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.