Software Engineer
Cisco is hiring a Software Engineer for a remote role open to applicants in United States. It pays $139k-$204k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Cisco.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this software engineer role is Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- The posting lists this role as remote.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Go, C and Kafka.
- Level lists 1,500+ other open roles at Cisco.
- The role was posted within the past two weeks.
AI in this role
Architect and maintain high-throughput data processing pipelines and edge infrastructure for real-time observability and security platforms.
Meet the Team
The Edge Processor Team serves as the foundational engine of the Splunk Integrated Data Platform, architecting and maintaining high-throughput pipelines that process petabytes of data on the customer’s edge environment. Our work sits at the critical intersection of Cisco and Splunk integration, providing the mission-critical infrastructure that powers real-time observability and security for our global enterprise customers. We are a high-performing, collaborative organization that prioritizes clean code, rigorous testing, and pragmatic architectural decision-making. Operating in a hybrid/remote environment, we foster a culture where technical excellence and continuous learning are the standards. This role offers a unique opportunity to solve complex distributed systems challenges at a scale unmatched in the industry.
Your Impact
- Leading the end-to-end delivery of complex projects that span the timeline of multiple months, including the complete software development cycle: Understand requirements, writing system design documents, develop, test, automate and deploy software
- Set technical vision for the team, including improving the process, providing coding and design guidelines to set a high engineering standard
- Identify and resolve pre-production system bottlenecks and production issues
- Engage in design and code reviews of the product, and enhance your knowledge of customers’ experiences to prevent future problems
- Make code maintainable and the product diagnosable and serviceable
- Participate in rotating on-call duties to diagnose and solve customer issues.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field and 7+ years of experience in backend software development, with a focus on large-scale distributed systems or Master's Degree with 4+ years of related experience
- Experience with Go or C++ programming language, and working with concurrency models and memory management
- Experience architecting, deploying, and scaling high-volume data processing pipelines systems
- Experience with high-performance data paths in streaming ingestion systems like Kafka, Pulsar, Spark, Elastic. Including analyzing network traffic, protocol behavior, and diagnostic data to resolve throughput, latency, and reliability issues.
Preferred Qualifications
- Familiarity and experience with observability platform using Open Telemetry.
- Infrastructure experience with Kubernetes and on-premise deployments.
- Ability to influence technical strategy and align stakeholders across multiple teams and organizational levels.
- Demonstrated success in leading complex engineering roadmaps from initial conception through to production.
- A strong track record of mentoring senior engineers and fostering a culture of high-performance and technical excellence.
- Advanced ability to communicate complex architectural concepts and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- A demonstrated passion for driving innovation and maintaining expertise in state-of-the-art distributed systems and data platform technologies.
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 $139,300.00 to $203,600.00 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 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:
$167,700.00 - $282,000.00Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$149,100.00 - $250,900.00* 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.
How we rate this
Software Engineer at Cisco rates 0 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Pay
- This job starts at
- $139k
- Typical software engineer job
- $167k
This posting starts 17% below the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where backend was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where data pipelines was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where concurrency was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where system design was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Backend, Distributed Systems, Data Pipelines, Concurrency, and System Design. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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