Senior Software Engineer

Software Development Engineer

The Cisco Enterprise Routing team is responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle of the platforms that serve as the "connective tissue" for businesses worldwide. Their work ensures that data-ranging from simple office emails to high-bandwidth video conferencing and cloud-based applications-moves securely and efficiently across branch offices, campus networks, and multi-cloud environments. We are seeking a highly skilled Software Development Engineer to join our team focused on the development of Cisco's 2nd Generation Secure Routers. In this role, you will operate at the intersection of hardware and software, building high-performance solutions that power our enterprise-grade routing platforms. You will be responsible for low-level software development, including ROMMON, device drivers, and the optimization of forwarding plane software to ensure maximum throughput and security.

What You'll Do

• Lead the design and delivery of large, complex features across the routing stack, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security from start to finish.

• Develop low-level platform software including ROMMON, bootloaders, device drivers, and forwarding-plane components.

• Set design direction, coordinate among several engineers, and integrate hardware and software by bringing up new platforms and supporting NIM modules.

• Debug complex issues across hardware, firmware, and software layers; participate in on-call rotations and postmortems, rarely causing preventable customer downtime.

• Write clean, maintainable code with unit tests; perform code reviews, contribute to secure coding practices, and promote an automated testing culture.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with hardware, product, and design teams; act as a recognized resource and mentor for less experienced colleagues.

• Internalize the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) process, understanding technical trade-offs to meet business needs and deadlines on high-stakes projects.

• Use modern development workflows including AI-assisted coding tools.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelors + 7+ years of related professional software engineering experience, or Masters + 5+ years of related experience.

• Proven ability to work autonomously on problems with unclear solutions requiring judgment and analysis.

• C/C++ systems programming in embedded or low-level environments.

• Experience with device drivers, RTOS/Linux kernels, and hardware-software interfaces.

• Understanding of routing architectures and L2 protocols (Ethernet, VLANs, STP).

• Experience with ROMMON, hardware bring-up, and BSPs.

• Strong debugging skills across hardware, firmware, and software layers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI-assisted development tools (Copilot, Claude, Codex).

• Familiarity with modern IDE's and tools.

• Knowledge of secure boot chains and hardware-based security.

• Experience working in Agile, cross-functional, and distributed teams, often taking the technical lead.