Customer Escalations Engineering Technical Leader (Chicago)

The application window is expected to close on: 10/23/2026Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.Meet the TeamThe Global Meraki Escalations and Product Specialist Group operates within the CEAD (Customer Escalations Adoption and Deployment) Engineering organization. This team is dedicated to leading Customer Escalations and triaging Customer Facing Defects. They collaborate closely with Meraki Support, Development Engineering, and Product Management teams to ensure a top-tier Customer and Support Experience. The CEAD team is committed to delighting customers by delivering exceptional products—including Catalyst and Meraki platforms, switching, wireless, and routing—and outstanding support experiences through multi-functional collaboration across Cisco, fostering growth and innovation.The Customer Escalations Engineering Technical Leader role will focus on Meraki Platform (Dashboard and Licensing) as the product area of work.Your ImpactLead resolution for critical and strategic issues, including CAP, Critical Incident Center (CIC) engagements, Sev0 incidents, and other high-visibility customer situations. This involves offering technical, tactical, and collaborator guidance to enhance quality, customer outcomes, and resolution paths. Lead Pro-active Assurance initiatives that transition CEAD from reactive issue response to earlier risk detection, customer stabilization, and closed-loop product improvement by using Meraki Dashboard intelligence, critical metric signals, customer configuration context, release-readiness insights, and field trends. Staying closely aware of active customer and partner concerns, platform trends, top issues, customer-impacting product behaviors, and recurring support themes is crucial. The position represents Support and customer/ partner feedback in product decisions, serviceability improvements, issue triage, and defect resolution. It also involves identifying systemic or large-impacting issues, coordinating the right collaborators, and raising clarity with leadership when customer or Support impact is significant. Leading or guiding sophisticated lab recreates, technical analysis, data gathering, and storytelling for blocking issues, pro-active engagements, and product-quality discussions is part of the responsibilities. The role leads serviceability improvements for existing and upcoming Meraki Platform capabilities, including documentation, diagnostics, telemetry, workflows, and support tools, as well as support readiness efforts for new platform features, releases, product changes, process updates, and customer-impacting launches. Building, reviewing, and improving support documentation, training material, and timely Support communiques are also key tasks. Additionally, the role seeks opportunities for innovation and automation to reduce manual effort, improve resolution speed, increase support quality, and enhance customer outcomes. Mentoring senior engineers, aspiring technical leaders, and peers through coaching, delegation, technical guidance, and career-development support completes the scope of this leadership position.Minimum Requirements8+ years of IT industry experience in Customer Escalations, Engineering, Technical Support, or related customer-facing technical organizations.Understanding of Meraki Dashboard, cloud-managed networking, support workflows, product serviceability, and customer-impacting platform behavior.Demonstrated experience leading complex technical investigations, critical customer issues, or multi-functional product/serviceability engagements.Experience identifying trends across cases, bugs, telemetry, support signals, customer feedback, and field issues.Validated ability to work with multi-functional collaborators to drive customer outcomes and product improvements.Experience creating support documentation, readiness plans, technical training, or support facing communications.Preferred QualificationsStrategic Influence & Collaboration: Demonstrated ability to act as a trusted advisor, effectively navigating and influencing outcomes across Engineering, Product Management, and Support teams to resolve systemic issues.Pro-active Technical Leadership: Expertise in shifting from reactive fix to pro-active risk detection, using telemetry, field trends, and dashboard intelligence to stabilize customer environments.Crisis Management & Resolution: Extensive experience leading high-visibility, critical engagements (e.g., CAPs, Sev0 incidents, CICs) through complex technical analysis, lab recreates, and clear, actionable storytelling.Product Quality Advocacy: A track record of representing the customer experience in product development cycles, directly impacting serviceability, release readiness, and issue resolution strategies.Mentorship & Organizational Growth: A commitment to fostering team success through active coaching, delegation, and the development of senior engineers, ensuring a pipeline of technical leadership and shared accountability.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 $183,800.00 to $263,600.00 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 employees1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by CiscoNon-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 employeesExempt 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 nextAdditional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family membersOptional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteerFor 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%; andOnce 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 - $303,100.00Non-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.Job SummaryJob number: 2019078Date posted : 2026-07-23Profession: Product and EngineeringEmployment type: Full time