Hardware Compliance Regulatory Engineer

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

This position is onsite in San Jose, with approximately 10% travel to Asia.

Meet the Team

Common Hardware Group (CHG) Compliance team supports regulatory approval across various products like Cisco wireless access points, cellular routers, sensors, and many others. As part of the central hardware power engineering group, you will collaborate with various functions like Hardware Design and Test, ASIC Design and Test, Power Engineering, Signal Integrity, EMC / EMI, and Mechanical Design, expanding the breadth of your knowledge, designing power, and delivering amazing products to the market.

Your Impact

As a Hardware Regulatory Engineer, you will partner with hardware, RF/antenna, firmware/software, product security, and compliance teams to develop regulatory strategies and support EMC/RF validation.

• You will work with external test laboratories to ensure products achieve certification readiness and meet global regulatory requirements.

• Define EMC and RF regulatory requirements for global markets (FCC, CE, IC, RED, MIC).

• Define performance monitoring metrics during EMC/EMI testing.

• Develop compliance strategies early in the product design lifecycle to minimize certification risk.

• Review schematics and recommend filtering, shielding, grounding, and ESD protection solutions.

• Coordinate with JDM partner to address the design issues and come up with the EMC and RF test plan and provide PCB layout guidance on stack up, return paths, impedance control, and EMI mitigation.

• Ensure RF designs meet regulatory requirements for wireless technologies (WiFi, Bluetooth,5G NR, LTE, etc.).

• Plan and complete pre-compliance testing including radiated, conducted emissions, surge, ESD, EFT/B, Radiated immunity, Conducted immunity

• Collaborate with hardware, RF, mechanical, antenna design and manufacturing teams to ensure compliant product design.

• Build EMC test setups including cabling, grounding, support equipment, and worst-case operating modes.

• Configure traffic generators to create representative data loads and route traffic through DUT interfaces during testing.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, electronics engineering, RF Engineering, or related field with 7+ years of experience; or master’s degree with 4+ years of experience or PhD with one year of experience.

• Experience with RF regulatory test requirements such as DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection), Adaptivity, Receiver Blocking, and AFC (Automatic Frequency Control).

• Experience with EMC compliance requirements and test methods for the test cases such as radiated and conducted emissions, immunity testing, and evaluation of product functional performance.

• Experience configuring test modes, monitoring RF performance degradation, and supporting compliance validation for Wi-Fi and other intentional radiator devices.

• Experience using spectrum analyzers, EMI receivers, vector network analyzers (VNA), signal generators, oscilloscopes, near-field probes, LISNs, and RF power meters.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with power electronics, power supply, or analog design, including knowledge in high-efficiency power topologies such as buck, buck-boost and flyback.

• Knowledge of component selection and materials affecting EMC performance.

• Familiarity with environmental and reliability standards impacting EMC performance such as temperature, humidity, vibration, and aging effects.

• Familiarity with system-level test automation tools such as Python, LabVIEW, MATLAB, or similar tools.

• Familiarity with cybersecurity and regulatory compliance frameworks impacting connected electronic products, including EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), India Commsec (Communication Security) requirements, and other applicable global cybersecurity standards.

• Experience developing automated test scripts or traffic profiles to monitor product performance during EMC immunity testing.

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:

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:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* 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.