Technical Leader, Hypershield and Secure Workload

Meet the Team

Isovalent, now part of Cisco, is the company founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF. Cisco Isovalent builds open-source software and enterprise solutions solving networking, security, and observability needs for modern cloud native infrastructure. The flagship technology, Cilium, is the choice of numerous, industry-leading, global organizations.

Isovalent, Hypershield and Secure Workload, part of the Security Business Group (SBG), are flagship security products offering workload protection, micro-segmentation and part of the Hybrid Mesh Firewall solution. With its market-leading technologies, Cisco is a leader in the Forrester Zero Trust Micro-segmentation wave, ensuring that customers have access to best-in-class security across any deployment model—on-prem, in the cloud, or in hybrid environment – and as bare metals, VMs, containers or orchestrated by Kubernetes.

Your Impact

Be part of an Agile team moving at a very fast pace to ensure reliability, availability and performance of our next-generation segmentation and firewall platform. The team owns the full lifecycle of production services — from infrastructure architecture through deployment, observability, and operations.

As a Technical Leader, you will influence reliability architecture and drive operational excellence, collaborating with product management and field teams to ensure platform reliability.

• Own the lifecycle of production services — deployment, monitoring, incident response, and capacity planning in a Linux-based multi-VM distributed systems environment.
• Perform systems-level debugging and performance tuning in virtual machines, containers, and Kubernetes environments.
• Build automation, tooling, and reliability frameworks in Python or Go, including database access layers and secrets storage, primarily using MongoDB, Vault, and Consul.
• Operate and troubleshoot in Linux environments, including containers, virtual machines, and Kubernetes-orchestrated environments.
• Manage and scale cloud infrastructure in AWS and GCP using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform.
• Own and evolve CI/CD pipelines to enable rapid, safe deployment of changes in SaaS environments.
• Conduct reviews, create runbooks, and lead post-incident learning across team members and the wider group, representing our platform in all forums.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends in networking, security, cloud-native infrastructure, and related areas, while mentoring others

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelors + 8 years of related experience, or Masters + 6 years of related experience, or PhD + 3 years of related experience
• 6+ years in software development in Python or Go
• Experience with AWS, GCP, or other major cloud service providers, including deploying, managing, or troubleshooting cloud infrastructure and services in production environments
• Work experience across diverse infrastructure environments, including on-premise, cloud platforms, or hybrid environments
• Experience with Linux systems including networking
• Experience with bare metal servers or virtual machines (VMs)
• Experience with containerized environments or Kubernetes-orchestrated systems
• Troubleshooting experience, to include cloud, on-premise or hybrid environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing and building Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform.
• Experience in Kubernetes networking
• Strong background in testing high-performance computing, multi-threading, and low-latency systems.
• Scripting, Ansible playbooks, and Jenkins experience
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and professional presentation

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 $183,800.00 to $263,600.00 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

$183,800.00 - $303,100.00

Non-Metro New York State & Washington State

$163,600.00 - $269,800.00

• 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.