About the role

Role overview

As a Principal Engineer (Platform & Identity / Cloud Security) at Cisco, you’ll help build and scale foundational platform services that enable secure, consistent management of security products across Cisco’s portfolio. You’ll act as a domain expert and technical authority, guiding architecture and engineering standards across cloud, security, and platform infrastructure.

Your impact

Innovate and deliver software/technology solutions with global impact across Cisco product and business groups.
Serve as an internal/external/industry expert, providing guidance on complex technical challenges.
Act as a domain expert or cross-domain integrator—connect emerging trends to Cisco product impact.
Set technical direction and standards, influencing technical and business leaders and the broader engineering community.
Drive and enable technology strategies for long-term business value.
Stay ahead of evolving technology and industry trends to maintain competitive advantage.
Partner across engineering, product, and business teams to turn strategic vision into scalable solutions.
Mentor and influence senior technical leaders to ensure architectural consistency and engineering excellence.

Minimum qualifications

Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field, with 12+ years designing/developing large-scale software, platform, or distributed systems.
Experience building and scaling highly available, secure, distributed systems in cloud or hybrid environments.
Experience writing production-grade code in modern languages (e.g., Go, Rust, or C++).
5+ years applying security, privacy, and data protection principles to platform and identity systems.

Preferred qualifications

Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science/Engineering or related field.
Recognized technical leadership influencing architecture across multiple product lines/business units.
Experience driving platform strategy in large-scale enterprise or cloud environments.
Experience integrating with platform services such as observability, data platforms, or AI/ML-driven systems.
Proven record influencing technical direction and aligning stakeholders in a matrixed organization.
Experience defining technical architecture and driving end-to-end system design across multiple teams.
Contributions to industry standards, open source, patents, or publications.
Ability to translate emerging trends into long-term strategy and business impact.

Location / work model

Based in San Jose, CA with a hybrid schedule (3 days onsite), or
Fully remote anywhere in the United States.

About Cisco

Cisco is a global technology company focused on networking, cybersecurity, and data/infrastructure platforms. In the AI era, it builds solutions that connect and protect organizations across physical and digital environments. The role sits in Cisco’s Platform & Identity Engineering Group, which delivers secure, scalable core platform services for Cisco products.

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