Principal Software Engineer

Cisco is a technology company that develops solutions connecting and protecting organizations across physical and digital environments. Cisco is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead developer experience and GitOps strategy, architect enterprise-scale platforms, modernize engineering delivery, and advise senior leaders while driving adoption of cloud-native, secure, and AI-assisted workflows.

Responsibilities:

• This role serves as a strategic leader for developer experience and GitOps within Cisco Collaboration, tasked with aligning platform architecture with critical business, security, and operational goals
• You will spearhead enterprise-scale initiatives to modernize the engineering lifecycle, optimizing how teams build, deploy, and secure services across Kubernetes and VM-based environments
• By defining robust reference architectures and governance models, you will standardize CI/CD automation, secrets management, and deployment visibility to drive engineering excellence
• Beyond technical design, you will act as a key advisor to senior leadership, resolving complex organizational blockers and influencing teams through mentorship and cross-functional decision-making
• This position is particularly exciting because it offers the opportunity to build the future of developer efficiency by driving the adoption of AI-assisted workflows and modern delivery models
• Ultimately, you will represent the platform strategy to stakeholders, ensuring that these investments deliver measurable business outcomes and improved release velocity

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree with 15+ years of relevant experience, Master's degree with 12+ years, or PhD with 8+ years of experience in software engineering
• 10+ years in full-stack development, including backend systems using Java or Spring Boot and frontend interfaces using React, Angular, or Vue.js
• Production experience crafting and delivering APIs, services, and platform workflows for large-scale enterprise environments
• Previous enterprise implementation of CI/CD pipelines and Git-based release automation using tools such as GitHub Actions
• Ownership of architecting and handling containerized, cloud-native applications within Kubernetes and distributed system environments
• Production experience with GitOps-based delivery using Argo CD or equivalent platforms
• Experience with HashiCorp Vault or comparable secrets-management technologies
• Experience with Helm, Kustomize, Terraform, Ansible, or other infrastructure and deployment automation tools
• Experience supporting both Kubernetes-based and VM-based deployment models at enterprise scale
• Breadth across platform engineering, developer experience, release engineering, security, observability, and operational readiness
• Experience defining technical standards, reference architectures, adoption plans, and success metrics for internal developer platforms
• Ability to anticipate business and industry changes, connect technical strategy to product outcomes, and develop innovative approaches beyond existing solutions
• Practical experience with AI-assisted development, agentic workflows, or automation patterns that improve engineering productivity while maintaining governance and security standards
• Strong mentoring presence and demonstrated ability to raise engineering quality across teams through influence, review, and technical guidance