# Lead Performance & AI Tools Engineer, Hybrid at Cisco

Cisco is hiring a Lead Performance & AI Tools Engineer, Hybrid. It pays $187k-$268k a year and Level rates it Works on AI ●●●○; you can [apply on Cisco](https://jobsbylevel.com/go/577502d1-fa66-4f5a-85ed-96278299be99?utm_medium=ai-agent).

AI Level 3, AI centrality 66 out of 100. Milpitas, California, US.

## Details

- Company: [Cisco](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/cisco)
- AI level: AI Level 3 (score 66 out of 100)
- Location: Milpitas, California, US
- Salary: $187k-$268k
- Posted: November 5, 2026
- Apply: https://jobsbylevel.com/go/577502d1-fa66-4f5a-85ed-96278299be99?utm_medium=ai-agent
- Free CV review for this job: https://jobsbylevel.com/cv-review?job=lead-performance-ai-tools-engineer-hybrid-at-cisco-4fec53

## Prepare for this job

The job page lists 5 likely interview questions for this offer, with a CV checklist: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/lead-performance-ai-tools-engineer-hybrid-at-cisco-4fec53

## Description

The application window is expected to close on: 12/20/2026 This is a Hybrid role based out of Cisco's San Jose office. MEET THE TEAM Cisco’s Developer Platforms and AI Productivity team is dedicated to empowering thousands of engineers by building next-generation internal tools, developer workflows, and autonomous AI agents. As part of Cisco's core engineering organization, our platforms accelerate software delivery speed, eliminate development friction, and ensure high reliability across our global cloud-native portfolio. We are a high-impact, collaborative group of systems engineers, performance architects, and AI practitioners who operate with a startup mindset, treating internal developers as our primary customers. You will have the unique opportunity to pioneer the future of AI-assisted software engineering by integrating coding agents, automated triage, and intelligent performance frameworks at massive enterprise scale. YOUR IMPACT As a Technical Leader in Developer Productivity & Performance Engineering, you will serve as the architectural owner for intelligent developer platforms and AI agent tooling. You will turn complex software delivery bottlenecks into high-leverage automation—spanning pull request analysis, CI failure triage, test selection, and release readiness. In this role, you will apply rigorous performance engineering to AI model endpoints and distributed Kubernetes workloads to guarantee optimal throughput and low latency. Success in this position means measurable improvements in developer velocity, shorter cycle times, and the seamless adoption of safe, sandboxed AI workflows across Cisco engineering. Architect and deploy AI-assisted developer tools: Build intelligent agents for automated PR analysis, CI failure diagnosis, and engineering knowledge retrieval to drastically reduce developer cycle time and manual debugging. Drive end-to-end performance engineering: Design and implement load, stress, and scalability testing using Python and Locust to optimize latency, throughput, and token generation rates across distributed services and model endpoints. Establish safe agent execution frameworks: Implement sandboxing, scoped permissions, and confidence thresholds to ensure AI developer tools operate reliably, securely, and transparently. Unify observability and telemetry pipelines: Correlate metrics from Datadog, Grafana, Splunk, and OpenTelemetry to identify systemic bottlenecks and provide actionable architectural recommendations to engineering leadership. Building and shipping developer productivity platforms, not just designing AI agents. Using AI-assisted development to accelerate engineering delivery, rather than only integrating LLMs into applications. Driving measurable productivity improvements and adoption across engineering teams. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related STEM field and 10+ years of relevant software engineering experience, Master’s degree and 7+ years, or Ph.D. and 4+ years building distributed platforms. 5+ years of software development experience using Python to design, build, and deploy production internal engineering platforms, automation frameworks, or developer productivity tools Experience implementing LLM APIs, AI coding assistants, or autonomous agent workflows (e.g., retrieval-augmented generation, PR analysis, or automated failure diagnosis) within engineering delivery pipelines. Prior experience conducting performance engineering, load testing, and workload modeling for distributed systems using Locust or equivalent load-testing frameworks to analyze latency, throughput, and resource utilization. Experience operating within Kubernetes and containerized cloud environments, coupled with experience utilizing observability platforms (e.g., Grafana, Datadog, Splunk) and distributed tracing. Integrating developer tools and automation workflows experience with Git-based source control, pull requests, CI/CD pipelines, APIs, and

The description is cut here. Read the full offer: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/lead-performance-ai-tools-engineer-hybrid-at-cisco-4fec53

Source: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/lead-performance-ai-tools-engineer-hybrid-at-cisco-4fec53

## Cite this page

Level. https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/lead-performance-ai-tools-engineer-hybrid-at-cisco-4fec53.

Get job alerts: https://jobsbylevel.com/newsletter