Security Engineering Technical Leader

Security Engineer Technical Leader

This role can be performed from any location within the United States. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Cisco's Platform Security Team is committed to delivering advanced security compliance and risk management solutions that ensure consistent enforcement of security policies, automate compliance processes, and protect platforms against evolving threats. You will work alongside experienced engineers who empower their peers by providing the tools, frameworks, and processes needed to deliver high-quality automation and security reviews.

Your Impact

The Security Engineering Technical Lead plays a critical role in designing and implementing scalable automation and AI-driven solutions to strengthen security controls across the organization's application and platform ecosystem. This position collaborates closely with multiple teams to integrate security policies into development workflows, ensuring secure software delivery without compromising speed. The role also focuses on leveraging automation and AI to improve risk identification, security architecture reviews, and compliance validation.

Key responsibilities include:

• Designing and implementing scalable automation and AI-driven tools to enhance security controls, architecture reviews, risk identification, and decision support.
• Partnering with Application Security, Cloud Engineering, Platform teams, and enterprise architects to develop automated security guardrails and integrate security policies into development workflows.
• Ensuring new systems, integrations, and services comply with organizational security standards through automated validation, policy-as-code, and continuous monitoring.
• Building reusable security frameworks, intake processes, and automated validation mechanisms to reduce manual review effort while improving consistency, visibility, and compliance.
• Performing and scaling risk assessments and security architecture reviews for applications, cloud platforms, APIs, and system integrations.
• Collaborating with software development teams to create innovative, automated security solutions that demonstrate measurable business efficiency gains, leveraging AI to address security gaps.
• Quickly adapting to new security challenges, especially related to IaaS platforms, and engaging with lead architects and technical leads through design reviews, pair programming, code reviews, and sharing AI expertise.
• Documenting solutions clearly to support team training and production support personnel.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in cybersecurity, security engineering, DevSecOps, or application security.
• 3+ years of experience in security automation or software engineering, including scripting or development in languages such as Python, Go, or Java.
• Demonstrated experience automating security controls or processes, such as security assessments, configuration validation, compliance checks, or vulnerability management workflows.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and understanding of cloud security architectures.
• Familiarity with policy-as-code or automation frameworks used to enforce security controls (e.g., OPA, Terraform, IaC scanning tools) and ability to translate security requirements into automated, scalable engineering solutions.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong collaboration and communication skills with the ability to work across engineering, architecture, and security teams.
• Bachelor's, Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Information Security, Engineering, or related field.
• Experience building automated architecture review frameworks or security guardrails.
• Experience with threat modeling or secure design practices.
• Familiarity with AI/LLM frameworks used for automation or analysis.
• Experience building security developer platforms or internal tooling.
• Security certifications such as CISSP, CSSLP, CCSP, or similar.

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 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: $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.