Incident Manager

Role requires on-call rotation and support of critical incidents outside normal business hours when needed.

Meet the Team

Join a dynamic, globally distributed group of technical program managers and escalation specialists who lead the charge on major security incidents and customer escalations. Our team is at the heart of Cisco’s unified security platform, partnering closely with engineering, product, support, and account teams to ensure customers are protected and critical issues are resolved quickly. With a dozen talented professionals based in San Jose and around the world, the team thrives on collaboration, ownership, and a fast-paced, high-impact environment. You'll work alongside distinguished engineers and leaders, interact directly with customer executives, and help shape the future of our security products. If you’re excited to solve complex problems, drive innovation, and make a tangible difference for customers and the business, this team is the place to be.

Your Impact

Drive the response to major incidents and complex customer escalations to ensure rapid restoration of critical services and customer satisfaction. Coordinate cross-functional teams, assign actions, track progress, and deliver timely updates to stakeholders, minimizing risk and business disruption. Prepare operational reports, outage summaries, and follow-up actions to promote transparency and continual improvement. Partner with Problem Management to document root causes and implement corrective measures, preventing repeat incidents. Lead post-incident reviews, develop and refine playbooks, and leverage automation to enhance efficiency and organizational readiness. Success in this role means consistently resolving high-impact issues, improving incident management processes, and helping shape the reliability and resilience of Cisco's security platform.

• Lead P1 and P2 incidents and complex customer escalations from intake through resolution or handoff and serve as a primary escalation point during critical incidents and cross-functional issues; coordinate Support, Engineering, Product, Account Teams, and leadership to drive resolution.

• Assign actions, track progress, identify blockers, and ensure clear ownership and follow-through; and provide timely and accurate updates to customers, engineers, and leadership.

• Identify customer and business risk and drive mitigation plans; and lead post-incident reviews and partner with Problem Management on root-cause analysis and corrective actions.

• Develop and improve incident-management playbooks, processes, and governance.

• Lead crisis simulations and tabletop exercises to improve organizational readiness.

• Prepare operational reports, outage summaries, metrics, and follow-up plans.

• Use automation and AI-enabled tools to improve incident response and identify opportunities for prevention.

• Mentor and coach incident managers and engineers.

• Partner with Architecture, Product, and Engineering to improve reliability, observability, resilience, and serviceability.

• Support continual improvement across incident-management practices.

• Help define priorities and long-term improvements for incident management across the organization.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 10 years of related experience, Master’s degree and 8 years, or equivalent relevant experience.

• Experience in major incident management, technical support, customer escalation management, site reliability, or a related field.

• Experience leading P1/P2 incidents and complex customer issues through resolution or formal handoff.

• Experience coordinating Support, Engineering, Product, Account Teams, and leadership during critical incidents.

• Experience with incident tracking and customer-management tools such as Jira and Salesforce.

• Experience documenting root cause, corrective actions, and follow-up work.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Splunk Security products, including Splunk Enterprise Security, SOAR, XDR, EDR, or related cybersecurity technologies.

• Experience with cloud platforms, Kubernetes, APIs, networking, observability, or distributed systems.

• Ability to read or troubleshoot code in Python, Java, C++, Go, or a similar language.

• ITIL certification or experience applying ITIL incident, problem, change, and continual-improvement practices.

• Experience using automation, AIOps, or AI-enabled incident-management tools.

• Experience leading work across multiple regions and time zones.

• Ability to communicate clearly and make decisions during high-pressure situations.

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.