Technical Lead, Backend, Security Innovation

The application window is expected to close on July 25th, 2025. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received. Meet the Team This is an exciting opportunity to join our Cisco Security Chief Technology Office (CTO) team focused on building new innovation as we take a platform centric approach to the next generation data center. Our Security Innovation team is creating winning solutions for workload orchestration for our customers that focus on ease of use and integrate identity, security, networking, and management services from Cisco's entire portfolio. Your Impact In this role, you will drive the develop or a new workload platform leveraging Kubernetes, Cilium and Kubevirt with a focus on ease of use. You'll collaborate with industry leading internal Cisco teams, like Isovalent, with the goal of making our platform's network seamlessly co-exist with customer's existing network topology. You'll also partner with our AI Software & Platform team to leverage agentic AI for running playbook/automation to simplify migration of workloads and integrations from existing workload platforms to our platform.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 8+ years or Master's degree with 6+ years or PhD with 3+ years of platform software development experience to including programming with GoLang or equivalent experience
• Demonstrated experience using Kubernetes for automating, scaling and managing workload applications.
• Demonstrated experience with open-source operating systems such as Linux
• Demonstrate experience using database management tools such as SQL

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with remote procecure calls (RPCs) like gRPC, Thrift and JSON RPC
• Experience with tools such as Cilium, Kubevirt, KVM and eBPF
• Experience with VMware vSphere and NSX
• Experience with platforms like OpenShift
• Experience with open-source tools like OpenStack

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. Simply put - we power the future. 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: When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process. U.S. employees have to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings. Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco's flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco's Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter. Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community. Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. 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 up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid. Apply Job! Apply to this Job