Principal Software Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 12, 2026. First seen by Alion on Nov 10, 2026. Cisco Systems scores B on the Alion truth index.
Meet the Team:
The team you will join is the Isovalent at Cisco team where you will work with Linux kernel maintainers and system engineers to deliver and support BPF. This team builds the core components that are the foundation for Cisco products, such as Tetragon, Live Protect and Hypershield.
Your Impact
As a Principal level engineer to develop the next generation of Linux kernel, BPF, BTF and system level tooling in support of BPF and the Live Protect product family. This position will be responsible for interacting with security and threat research teams (both internal and external), defining the architecture and design for the internal engineering teams, and developing early stage ideas to released products including contributing to the upstream open source Linux communities including the Linux kernel organization.
Minimum Qualifications:
- 12+ years of experience with systems level programming in the Linux kernel, associated systems tooling or compilers.
- 12+ years of open source experience working on open source projects, examples include Kubernetes, BPF, LLVM, and the Linux kernel.
- Familiarity with presenting work in technical forums, such as technical conferences, IETF, technical papers, whitepapers, etc.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experienced contributor to the Linux kernel
- Familiarity with compiler technologies such as clang and gcc.
- Maintainer or top contributor to BPF projects and code.
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.