Software Engineer

The application window is expected to close on: 08/25/2026

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received .

Who You'll Work With

Our Incident Command Software Engineering team is a diverse and hardworking group of individuals that share a passion for both developing sophisticated software and computer security. We are driven to stay one step ahead of the constantly evolving threat landscape, and we have fun while doing it!

Our methodology uses an AI-based, fast paced, Agile development environment. We combine the simplicity of Kanban and the power of continuous integration and deployment, combined with AI to accelerate our high quality software delivery. We collaborate with vendors, partners, and industry leaders to incorporate the latest digital analytic techniques into our product.

Become part of Cisco's fast growing and exciting Internet Security team. We are actively building next-generation security services crafted to detect and respond to security events.

What You'll Do

We are searching for a Software Engineer to join a team building and extending our next-generation incident detection and response services.

You will work closely with Cisco's internal security investigation and analysis teams to design work flows, systems, and processes that deliver reliable, scalable, and effective security services.

You should be highly qualified in designing and engineering software solutions to securely meet the demand of our security team.

You also should have the ability and desire to learn internet security from, and with, a team of experts.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Apply AI tools in software engineering, test, and delivered solutions as needed to meet business goals, while evaluating AI-generated code for correctness, security, maintainability, and fit with the codebase.
• Lead small-to-medium features from technical design through completion, including requirements analysis, design, coding, testing, deployment, and production support.
• Translate internal security operations needs into secure, maintainable software designs, APIs, automations, and services that improve reliability and stakeholder outcomes.
• Develop clean, tested software consistent with Cisco Design Thinking Principles, secure coding practices, privacy expectations, and team engineering standards.
• Write code and unit tests with minimal guidance, enabling scale, reliability, and velocity in product releases.
• Perform code reviews for others on the project, identify immediate issues, and help improve code quality, maintainability, and secure development practices.
• Serve as a resource for colleagues with less experience by sharing knowledge, mentoring peers or engineering interns, and assisting through documentation, code reviews, and technical guidance.
• Prototype and deliver automation, tooling, and service improvements that strengthen detection, prevention, response, and security operations capabilities.
• Select and apply appropriate strategies, algorithms, data structures, and design patterns to solve complex engineering problems efficiently.
• Collaborate with domain experts in Incident Command and across Cisco to enhance, improve, or modify security methods in both on-prem and cloud environments.
• Maintain and improve production application environments, including monitoring, problem identification, troubleshooting, and timely resolution of reliability and availability issues.
• Debug and address software issues during development and in production systems; participate in on-call work as needed, and contribute to or lead postmortems and root cause analysis.
• Coordinate with team members and stakeholders on timelines, specifications, blockers, and trade-offs to support predictable, high-quality delivery.

What We're Looking For

• Typically 5 or more years of related software engineering experience, or equivalent experience through advanced degree, technical depth, or demonstrated impact.
• Experience writing software in one or more languages such as Python, Go, Java, or similar in a Linux or Unix-based environment.
• Demonstrated experience using AI coding generators responsibly, including the ability to evaluate and review generated code, identify problems, and show a deep understanding of the relevant codebase.
• Experience applying AI technologies to solutions that meet stakeholder, operational, or customer needs.
• Strong secure development practices, including secure coding principles, code review, privacy awareness, and understanding of feature-level threat models.
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs, services, integrations, automation, or full-stack capabilities.
• Experience with CI/CD, containerized builds and deployments, and orchestration platforms such as Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, or similar technologies.
• Comfortable developing solutions that efficiently use, move, transform, and supply large amounts of data in support of security operations.
• Experience troubleshooting production services, improving reliability, participating in on-call rotations, and contributing to postmortems or root cause analysis.
• Ability to work independently, clarify ambiguous requirements, identify paths around blockers, and communicate status, risks, and trade-offs clearly.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with peer stakeholders within and across teams, build productive working relationships, and support delivery of high-quality engineering outcomes.
• Ability to mentor peers, support less experienced engineers, and raise team engineering quality through code reviews, documentation, and technical guidance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in security operations, incident detection and response, detection engineering, threat analysis, or adjacent cybersecurity domains.
• Experience building cloud-native services or operational tooling in hybrid, on-prem, or cloud environments.
• Experience with observability, monitoring, alerting, and reliability practices for production services.
• Experience with data pipelines, event-driven architectures, stream processing, or large-scale security analytics.
• Familiarity with Agile software delivery, Kanban, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and modern engineering workflows.

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 $128,600.00 to $184,900.00 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:

$155,000.00 - $256,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$138,100.00 - $227,900.00

* 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.