Software Engineer
Cisco is hiring a Software Engineer in San Francisco, United States. It pays $168k-$245k 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 Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- Pay on this posting starts in line with the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions Claude, Cursor and Claude Code among its tools and skills.
- Cisco has 1,500+ other open roles on Level.
- Posted in the last few days.
AI in this role
Meet the Team
The Splunk Agent Resilience team is defining the future of AI resilience. Together our team provides scalable, cost-effective evaluation and guardrails that ensure AI agents behave as intended, improving reliability and reducing risks. This unified approach empowers our customers to expertly deploy and manage AI-powered applications with enhanced observability and control.
As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you'll work at the intersection of software engineering, customer engagement, and product innovation to help some of the world's largest enterprises successfully deploy AI into production. You'll partner closely with external customers to solve complex technical challenges while collaborating with internal Product and Engineering teams to improve the platform based on real-world customer needs.
If you enjoy solving hard engineering problems, working directly with customers, and building technology that scales beyond a single implementation, we'd love to hear from you.
Your Impact
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will:
- Partner with enterprise customers to understand technical requirements and business goals.
- Design scalable AI solution architectures and guide customers through production deployments.
- Build integrations, prototypes, and reusable tools that accelerate customer success.
- Lead technical workshops, architecture discussions, and troubleshoot complex production issues.
- Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams to share customer feedback and influence future product enhancements.
- Create documentation, reusable best practices, and technical assets that benefit future deployments.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, with 6+ years of relevant experience, or equivalent practical experience.
- Software engineering experience building production-grade applications- Python and/or Java.
- Experience with APIs, distributed systems, cloud platforms, or backend development.
- Experience with AI tools such as Claude Code, Codex, cursor, etc.
- Troubleshooting and problem-solving skills across multiple layers of the technology stack.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience deploying or supporting Generative AI, LLM, or Machine Learning applications in production.
- Experience with Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, observability, or MLOps.
- Experience building customer-facing technical solutions or integrations.
- Experience creating reusable developer tools, frameworks, or open-source contributions.
- Consulting, Solutions Engineering, or Technical Customer Success experience in enterprise environments.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to work directly with enterprise customers.
- Comfortable working in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
- Eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance, if required.
- AI, Machine Learning, or developer platforms experience.
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 $167,700.00 to $245,200.00 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 64 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● 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
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $168k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting starts close to the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
- What are the limits of Claude that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
- What's a project where you used Cursor hands-on?
- Walk me through how you've used Claude Code in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, ML Ops, Claude, Cursor, and Claude Code. 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.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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