Software Engineer

Meet the team:

The Search Acceleration team builds the foundational data platform services that enable Cisco to manage, discover, and analyze data at enterprise scale. Our mission is to create highly scalable, cloud-native infrastructure that powers metadata management, data discovery, and intelligent data optimization across a rapidly growing ecosystem of data sources.

Our engineers tackle complex distributed systems challenges, including large-scale metadata processing, cloud-native service architecture, asynchronous workflows, and multi-cloud data management. We build resilient platform services that prioritize scalability, reliability, performance, and operational excellence while supporting petabyte-scale data environments.

As a member of our team, you'll own high-impact initiatives from architecture and design through implementation and production. You'll collaborate with engineers, architects, and product teams across Cisco to solve challenging technical problems and influence the evolution of our enterprise data platform. If you're passionate about building distributed systems, solving hard engineering problems, and delivering platform capabilities that other engineering teams depend on, you'll thrive here.

Your Impact:

As a Software Engineer on the Search Acceleration team, you will design and build foundational platform services that enable Cisco's enterprise data platform to scale across petabytes of data and millions of metadata objects. Your work will directly influence how data is discovered, managed, and optimized across cloud environments, providing the foundation for analytics, governance, and AI-driven applications.

• Build highly scalable distributed systems. Design and develop cloud-native services that solve challenging problems in metadata management, asynchronous processing, distributed coordination, and large-scale data optimization while meeting demanding reliability and performance requirements.

• Own strategic platform capabilities end-to-end. Take technical ownership of critical features from architecture and design through implementation, testing, production deployment, and operational support. You'll have the opportunity to influence technical direction while delivering capabilities that other engineering teams depend on.

• Drive engineering excellence. Build software with a strong focus on quality, observability, automation, and operational resilience. You'll help establish engineering best practices through thoughtful design, comprehensive testing, code reviews, and continuous improvement.

• Collaborate across engineering organizations. Partner closely with software engineers, architects, and product managers across Cisco to define technical solutions, drive architectural alignment, and deliver integrated platform capabilities.

• Shape the future of our data platform. Evaluate emerging technologies, contribute to architectural decisions, and leverage AI-assisted engineering practices to accelerate development while maintaining a high standard of technical quality.

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelors or Masters in computer science + 3 years of related experience

• 3+ years experience with either GoLang, Java or Python

• 3+yrs experience developing Distributed Systems Cloud Native Services

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building or operating large-scale data platforms, metadata services, data lakes, storage systems, or analytics infrastructure using technologies such as Apache Iceberg, Apache Spark, Kafka, or similar distributed data technologies.

• Experience with software quality and operational excellence, including automated testing, observability, monitoring, performance tuning, and production troubleshooting.

• Experience driving technical solutions across cross-functional teams, collaborating effectively with software engineers, architects, and product managers to deliver complex initiatives.

• Experience with Apache Spark and Iceberg

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and cloud automation tools such as Terraform, Helm, or Kubernetes Operators.

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. 

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:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* 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.